


December

by TeekiJane



Series: A Year Apart [5]
Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeekiJane/pseuds/TeekiJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's almost winter break, and Jordan couldn't be happier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Under Pressure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exams. Does it get any worse?

From: mamapike8  
To: autobiographical-q, ct_yankee_fan_00, ladiezman47, byronp86, movingvan87, thetardis7000, cheer_bear100, aireclayikepay91  
CC: johnpike55  
Subject: Secret Santa!  
Hi gang,  
I’ve gathered all of your Secret Santa wishes. Since we’re all scattered this year, I decided to email each of you the person you’ll be buying for and their wish. You should be getting that sometime in the next 24 hours. Well, one of you will just be getting a name, as I still haven’t received one person’s wish. (Hint, hint.)  
Hope those of you off at college are doing well. Study hard and I’ll see you soon!  
Love, Mom

I have to say it: I loved college. I’d expected it to be like high school, except for the whole ‘living with 1000 other kids in one building’ thing. But it was completely different. I could eat dinner at eleven-thirty one night and four-thirty the next. I could stay up all night if I wanted to. And the classes were way more interesting. I was taking a couple standard classes, composition and a math class. And then I had all kinds of interesting classes: Intro to communications, fundamentals of computer science and intro to public speaking. I’d already decided that the communications and computer science departments weren’t for me, but I still had a good time doing the assignments and participating in class discussions. 

“Did you know we have a hospitality management degree here?” I asked my roommate Dave. I was looking at the school’s website, reading the list of majors in each department. 

Dave rolled his eyes, because it was about the seventh time I’d made a similar announcement. “Shouldn’t you be studying?” he asked. How do I describe Dave? Three key things you need to know about him: he’s an economics major, and he doesn’t study too often, but when he does, he really buckles down. He’s a man of extremes—he’s either moving so fast he’s like a blur, or he’s crashed. He came off to school with no intention of ‘settling down’ but he met a girl the very first day he was here, and now he said ‘Jessica’ as often as I said ‘Haley.’ 

“You’re probably right,” I told Dave. I _had_ been studying my communications notes until about ten minutes before. I decided to take a quick break and check my email. I had found the note from my mom to the whole family and I’d gotten a little distracted. I love Christmas. I look forward to it every year. I can’t explain it; it’s not like I still believe in Santa Claus or something, but the magic that goes with the jolly fat man who slides down your chimney to leave you presents had never really gone away for me. I love baking and cooking. I love shopping for presents (which is saying something, because normally I avoid shopping like the plague.) I don’t even mind having to clean the house to get ready for Christmas. 

Of course, there was an extra element to it this year. Christmas also meant going home for the first time all school year. It meant getting to see Mom and Dad in person instead of talking to them on the phone. It meant sleeping in my own bed instead of one that had been slept in by probably forty other people, with a mattress more than five inches thick. It meant Haley. 

Of course, I had to get through exams first. I am not a good test taker. I can study and study and feel prepared, and then when I sit down with the paper in front of me, everything just flies out of my head. I had an A in every class except communications, because the only grades in that class were test scores. I was hovering at a low B in there. I wanted to pull that up, but the final for that class was comprehensive. I was taking half an hour every day to study for the class, but I felt like it wasn’t doing me any good. 

One last thing you should know about Dave: he’s good a reading people. Very good. I finally closed the school’s website and pulled my notes back out. I’d rewritten a few of them last week so they were more readable. I pulled the notebook up close to my face because the letters were all dancing. That had been happening more and more lately; I wasn’t sure if it was stress or if I needed glasses. Dave watched me closely and I knew he could see my frustration. “Don’t you have some friends in that class?” he asked me. “You guys should get together, make flashcards, quiz each other. Do Jeopardy. Everything’s always more fun with friends, even studying.” 

He was right about that, but there was one key fact he was missing: I didn’t want all my friends to know what a dum-dum I was. It was bad enough that _he_ knew how badly I freaked out before every test. Did I really want my classmates to see that side of me, too? I sighed and jiggled the notebook. “I’ll call Aaron later.” Aaron was one of my teammates who happened to be in my communications class. 

Dave could tell I was lying. “What subject are you up to now?” he asked. He’d shoved aside his own notecards, indicating he was done for now. 

“The history of television.” 

“Oh, gag,” he said, sounding so much like his girlfriend that I stifled a laugh. “I remember how you struggled with that the first time around.” I remembered, too. He’d come in as I was shouting every curse word I could think of (and a few I made up) at my textbook. A few of the neighbors had been scared of me for a couple days afterward. “All those dates.” 

I nodded. “I can’t keep them straight. I have all the facts in the right order, but I can’t keep the years right.” 

Dave nodded sympathetically. “I’ve had that problem before too.” He took a look at his watch. “I’m so tired of studying I could just die. Thank goodness the semester is almost over.” 

I wasn’t looking at it that way. All I could see was that I had five exams that were looming over me. As much as I wanted to look forward to the cheer of a Pike family Christmas, I couldn’t get excited about it for too long when finals were so much on my mind. 

I leaned back over my notebook, trying to get the words to come back into focus. All I wanted to do at that moment was get up and run, but I forced myself to sit in my chair. One of my knees kept tapping, which really wasn’t helping things. 

I was still staring at the same page of notes fifteen minutes later when Jessica showed up in the doorway. “How’s the studying going?” she asked both of us. 

Dave had put all his books away, changed his clothes and even brushed his teeth over the last few minutes. “As well as it ever does,” he told her with a hug. 

She kissed his jaw and he released his embrace. “And how about you, Jordan?” she asked me.

I didn’t lift my eyes off the page, even though I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. “Don’t mind him,” Dave told her as he grabbed a sweatshirt. “He’s gone insane. He’ll be back in his right mind this time next week.” 

I shook myself and gave Jessica a sheepish grin. “Sorry, lost in my notes,” I said, trying to make a joke of it, though it didn’t seem to be working. “What are you two up to tonight?” I asked. It was Saturday evening and exams started Monday morning. A couple of my teammates had given me a piece of advice: take either Saturday or Sunday night off to blow off steam. Dave had really liked that idea, so he and Jessica were headed out for a night out on the town. 

“It’s a mystery,” Jessica said. It was early December, but she was dressed without a jacket—so different from Connecticut. Mom had told me the night before that there was five inches of snow on the ground and it was probably ten degrees outside. “Dave won’t tell me what our plans are. But I will tell you he’s spending the night at my place, so you’ll have the room to yourself tonight.” 

I wasn’t really looking forward to a whole night alone. It’s not that I’m scared to sleep by myself, but I’m used to having other people in the room. Whenever Dave spends the night at Jessica’s—which happens about once a week—I have trouble sleeping. 

Add to that the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do but study and I was definitely not going to have a good evening. I didn’t have any plans and there was nothing on television. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hear from Haley that evening. Ever since Thanksgiving, she’d called me a lot less—about two days a week. The first couple days, I’d worried about whether this said something about our relationship. After we finally spoke again, though, I stopped thinking that way. She sounded absolutely dead. Kitchen  & Bath was open longer hours for the holiday. Haley was going in earlier in the day and getting home later at night. I felt for her because I knew she wanted to cut back her hours and work fewer days a week, but it was the busiest time of the year and the chances of that happening were slim. So she was toughing out the next couple weeks, not happy about it in any way. I was toughing the time out too, because no one seemed to understand my insecurities about tests the way she did. Or maybe, I just never showed them to anyone else. 

That sounded more accurate. 

Dave grabbed a sweater. “Take the night off, Jordan,” he said. “That communications final isn’t until Tuesday, right? And you’ve got tons of time to study. Relax—I know you know how. Have a few of my beers, even.” 

I grunted at him. I couldn’t afford to take the night off. There was too much more for me to study still. But I knew if I told him that, I’d get a lecture—of the nice, “for-your-own-good” variety. Dave and Jessica left in a flurry of “see you laters” and I was alone. 

I grabbed a can of energy drink and settled back in to studying. I put aside my communications book and picked up my computer science notes to review vocab. Even though I hadn’t slept much the night before, the energy drink was not the solution. Instead of making me less tired, it just made me more jittery. Still, I plunged on, hoping something was getting into my brain. 

I had given up working on my vocabulary and was rereading another part of my communications book when there was a knock on the door. By that point, I don’t even know why I even had the book open. I was half asleep, the words were swimming all over the pages and I definitely wasn’t learning anything…but I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. I’d shut the door after Dave had left almost four hours earlier, but I hadn’t locked it. “Come in,” I called, not looking up from my book. 

Jessica entered. She was laughing when she first slipped through the door, but the happy expression quickly left her face. “Dave left his bag here. I swear, he’d forget his head if it weren’t attached.” I eyed her briefly but then flicked my eyes back to my book. She leaned against my desk and made a face. “You haven’t been studying all night, have you?” 

I shrugged. “I have to do well on these exams.” 

“I get that. But you’re going to study yourself sick.” Jessica shook her head. “You already look kind of pale.” I shrugged at her again; I’d always been a little pale anyway. She scrunched up her mouth, and her expression reminded me so much of my mom when she wants to tell me that I’m on the wrong track, but she knows I won’t listen to her. “What would your girlfriend say if she saw you like this?” 

I set the book down and pulled my knees up to my chest. Adam has told me before that I am the second-best pouter and tantrum-thrower in our family, but that night, I was aiming for first place. Haley is always telling Byron he needs to relax, so I could only imagine what she would say if she saw me now. We’d just gotten together when I had my last high school exams, but I hadn’t even blinked at those. I’d already been accepted to college, and it didn’t matter how well I did after _that_. 

I imagined Haley’s voice in the back of my head: “You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, and you haven’t been sleeping. It’s not going to matter how hard you study if you don’t take care of yourself.” 

I wrapped my arms around my knees, looking toward the wall. Moments like this were the times I got the most homesick—because my mom would have come in with a sandwich and made me eat something if I’d skipped dinner. “I just want to get these exams over with so that I can go home,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Jessica. 

“I get that,” she said in her best soothing teacher-to-be voice. “I think you just need to remember that, one way or the other, exams will be over by this time next week. You can either chill out and know you did the best you could because you were relaxed and prepared, or you can be carted off in a straightjacket. The choice is yours.” 

Jessica left at that point, but I could hear her in the hallway, talking to Dave. “I’m worried about him,” she said. 

Dave was a little more mindful of how thin the walls were in that dorm. “Once he gets through exams, he’ll be fine,” he replied in a lower voice. “He hasn’t been home all year, and you know he talks about Connecticut like it’s Eden or something.” 

The two of them left, heading across campus back to Jessica’s room in an all-girls dorm. I thought they were being overly dramatic. Sure, I’d gotten pretty testy before a couple of exams earlier this year. And yeah, I’d forgotten to eat lunch. And dinner. And maybe my gut was so wrenched up that I’d slept about two hours the night before. 

Okay, so maybe they were right. But how exactly was I supposed to go about relaxing when my stomach was tied in knots and I couldn’t shut off my brain? My gut sloshed around and I decided to start with something to eat. (It was eight p.m. I’d last eaten nearly eleven hours before.) I made a sandwich and found a banana Dave had smuggled back from the cafeteria that morning. I turned the television on, but I don’t even know what I watched. What I do know is, in spite of the energy drink, I fell asleep on Dave’s decrepit old recliner chair and slept through until the morning…the paper plate from my sandwich still on my lap. 

*** 

Although I felt better physically (except for a crick in my neck) when I woke up that morning, my attitude toward my tests hadn’t really shifted. I woke to find Dave standing in front of the bathroom door, smirking at me. “Did you sleep like that all night?” he asked. I growled at him, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Hey, no, I’m not knocking it. At least you slept, and obviously you ate something. You’re looking a little better already.” 

I eased out of the chair, feeling several joints pop in the process. “Do we have any orange juice left?” I asked him. 

“Yup, bought some the other day, but it didn’t make it into the fridge.” He reached under his desk and pulled out a miniature carton of juice. “I brought some bagels and cream cheese back from One World. Have one before you get back into your studies.” 

I made a face at him, partly for sounding like a parent and partly because he had to go and remind me about exams. “Thanks, Mom,” I snarked, but I accepted both the orange juice and the bagel. 

“You’re welcome, Son,” Dave quipped. He sat down at his computer and opened up a Sudoku website; he starts every day with the latest puzzle, because he says it keeps his mind sharp. I sat down at my computer also, forcing myself to eat the bagel slowly. I opened my email and found another note from Mom about Secret Santa. Before I opened it, I started a countdown: it was Sunday morning, meaning I had fewer than 156 hours until I was home. 

The email was a bit disappointing. I had been anxiously awaiting the announcement of the wish I needed to fulfill. I figured it would give me something other than my exams to focus on. But I was going to have to keep waiting. “Jordan,” Mom began, “You’re buying a gift for Mallory. Unfortunately, she hasn’t gotten back to me with what her wish is. I’m going to give her a couple more days, so hold tight, okay? Love, Mom.” 

“Hold tight.” That was pretty funny, considering I felt like I’d already lost my grip. I checked my other messages; nothing new. Both of my brothers were busy preparing for finals as well. Adam had mentioned how one of his grades was still ‘borderline,’ so he’d been putting a lot of effort into studying for that class, while Byron was building something for one of his classes that was giving him fits. (Byron freaks out as badly about exams as I do, even though he always gets his A in the end.) 

I wasn’t quite ready to pull out my studies again. My stomach wasn’t as upset as it had been the day before—eating seemed to have helped that—but I was afraid that opening a textbook was going to put me right back where I had started. So I took a few more minutes and composed an email of my own. “Honey, I don’t know if this will help how stressed out you are, but I’ll be home in fewer than 156 hours. qqqqqq.” I could remember distinctly a phone conversation in which Haley had asked why xoxo meant hugs and kisses. We’d never answered the question, but I’d told her that Qs signified some serious heavy petting, just to hear her laugh. I’d ended every email I’d sent to her since with at least one Q. 

I dug around my stuff and found my fundamentals of computer science book. That was my Monday exam and the teacher had hinted that it was mostly going to be defining vocabulary terms as well as filling the pictures in on a few diagrams. Diagrams weren’t a problem, because I’d always been good at that. Show me an item, let me touch it and I’ll learn it just fine; show me a picture later and I’ll remember it. It was defining terms that was going to be harder. I’d done everything I could with the list I’d made. “Dave, can I buy some notecards off you?” I asked him. 

He chuckled. “My mom knows how much I love notecards. I seriously have almost a desk drawer full; she buys them at the dollar store.” He reached into the drawer and pulled out a fresh pack, which he tossed at me. “They’re on me. Merry Christmas.” 

I rolled my eyes at him. “Glad to know I’m worth a dollar-pack of cards to you,” I observed. 

“Jordan, you owe me thirty bucks so far this year for beer. Stop being such a tight-ass about studying and we’ll call it even, okay?” 

In my head I added up all the times I’d told him I’d pay him back for the alcohol his older brother had bought us and found out he was wrong—I owed him forty dollars. “Yeah, okay,” I said guiltily. I had no intention of actually writing off my debt to him, but it was easier to keep quiet about it and instead turn back to my new notecards. It took me nearly an hour to write them all out and then I spent another hour reviewing them. In this time, Dave had covered a little bit of each of his subjects. “I don’t like to dwell too long on any one topic,” he’d told me during midterms, “because I don’t think it helps.” 

I set my notecards aside, but then thought the better of it. I dug deep into one of my dresser drawers until I found an envelope. Inside were my social security card and birth certificate, a one hundred dollar bill (for emergencies) and a couple of other odds and ends. Among the items in there was a hair elastic, the type girls with long hair wear. I’d found it in my jeans pocket one day, with vague memories of Haley asking me to hold onto it when she’d taken her hair down while we were out on a date. I’d never remembered to return it to her, and somehow it had ended up in my “important documents file.” I grabbed the elastic, which was purple and sparkly—very Haley—and wrapped it around my notecards. Seeing it there, catching the lamp light, made me take a deep breath. 156 hours. I could survive that. And exams. 

The resolve didn’t last too terribly long. My English final was an essay, and I’d basically figured out there was no way for me to study for that. I reviewed the terms and ideas we’d gone over all semester, but I didn’t feel too bad about that grade. I had a solid A, and I’d already turned in a research paper that was the real bulk of my grade. I was okay in statistics, too. I have a way with numbers—I even scored higher on the math portion of the SAT than Byron did. Plus, those two finals weren’t until Friday, anyway. I could worry about them after I’d passed (or flunked) computer science and communications. 

And so I came back to communications. The class hadn’t been too terribly bad, but I’d come to loathe it with a fiery passion. When I’d first signed up for it, I’d been seriously flirting with the idea of going into radio or television production. Now, I never wanted to hear either of those words ever again. 

I had a handle on most of the vocabulary in that class. I could tell a cathode ray tube from a transistor. But you throw too many dates at me at once and I just get confused. During the last test when I’d had to deal with the history of television, the professor had written the dates and expected us to fill in the events that had occurred then. As I’d told Dave the night before, I’d memorized the facts in order, but I just could not remember the years. I’d had to makes some guesses, but most of the points I’d lost on that test had come from that section. 

I didn’t realize I was sighing and grunting and making other displeased noises until Dave—who had gone back to studying for his Western Civilization class—crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at me. “Hey,” he said, “Some of us are trying to learn over here. 

“As are some of us over here.” 

“Yeah, but you sound like someone’s torturing you while you’re doing it,” he observed. He turned toward me instead of addressing his desk. “What are you attempting to study?” 

“I’m back at the history of television.” 

“Again?” 

“It’s what I need the most help with,” I pointed out. “None of these dates is getting into my head. Every time I try to study them, I just want to jump out of my seat, run out the door, head off campus, keep running until I reach the ocean, and then maybe start swimming until I hit whatever’s on the other side.” 

Dave jumped out of his seat. I’d been kidding about everything after running out the door, but he seemed to have caught the spirit behind the whole statement. “Well, let’s solve that. Get your notes and your book and put them right here.” He shoved aside his backpack and I obliged. I had absolutely no idea what he was planning, but I knew him well enough to know it’s easier just to follow him when he’s five steps ahead of me. I always catch up eventually. 

Dave looked down the ‘hallway’ of our room, the part that leads underneath the loft in the back from the front half of the room. He’d bought a couple carpet runners that ran the front half of the room. Both were a little dirty. We weren’t exactly slobs, but the room was cluttered and lived in, and both runners probably needed a vacuum. Dave rolled up one runner, taking various papers and other crap with it. Then he laid out a row of computer paper. “Do you see what I’m doing here?” he asked. 

I shook my head. “Nope.” 

He rummaged around in his desk for a while before emerging with a roll of bright green duct tape. “It’s a timeline, like we used to make back in elementary school. You put the first date over here,” Dave gestured vaguely to one end of the paper while taping an entire walkway of white paper to the floor, “and your last date over there.” 

I nodded, but I was still bewildered. “How is this going to help me learn the facts any better?” I asked. 

“You’re a movement kind of guy,” Dave said. “You learn thing best when you _do_ rather than when you see or hear. This is a tactile, kinesthetic way for you to learn your dates. Trust me, Jordan.” 

I looked at him skeptically. “Kinesthetic?” I repeated. 

“You know. Movement.” Dave pulled out a fresh packet of notecards and tossed it at me. “Give it a try.” 

I was still unsure, but I pulled out a navy blue Sharpie marker. The marker had been in my backpack when I’d arrived at school, much to my surprise. But that wasn’t the end of my shock—it had been taped inside a notecard. ‘Someone’ had written “Good luck at school” with the Sharpie before attaching it. The note was unsigned, but only one of my siblings has a limitless obsession with Sharpies. I sincerely doubted Vanessa knew that I’d be making a giant timeline across the floor with it when she’d shoved it in my bag. 

I wrote years across the bottom of the paper, trying to space them evenly. Dave watched me without comment, but he was bouncing. “Did you want to help me with this?” I asked him. 

He shook his head. “You’ll learn it better if you do it yourself.” 

I didn’t look up from the paper. “But you said yesterday that studying was more fun with a friend.” 

“Okay, okay,” Dave said. I’d finished writing the years and he took the marker from me. “You make out the events on the notecard and tell me the date. I’ll write the date in the right spot, and you’ll put the card in place.” 

We got started and I quickly found that he was right: moving around and placing the cards helped me remember them. Dave wanted me to tape the cards in place, but I declined. “I’m going to put them down a couple of times before I tape them,” I informed him. 

He lit up. “You’re really getting the hang of this,” he said. 

I had just put down the last card for the third time when Jessica showed up. “What are you two doing?” she asked. She didn’t mean the question to be rude; she was just genuinely curious. 

Dave gave her a kiss. “Organizing the history of television.” 

“Ahh,” Jessica said as I grabbed up a roll of tape. She didn’t seem concerned or weirded out by our afternoon activity. In fact, she seemed to find it interesting. “Taping those in place now?” She asked. I nodded as I started putting little pieces of tape on each card. “I have a roll of masking tape in my room. I’ll bring it by later and you can _really_ tape them in place. Then you can stand on them and hop from card to card, like you were playing hopscotch.” 

I was amazed. “That’s a great idea.” 

Dave put his arm around her. “Where do you think I got the timeline idea from in the first place?” he asked. 

Jessica critiqued my timeline from one end to the other. “This is pretty good. You’re a kinesthetic learner, huh? If you like this one, I’ve got a bunch more ideas. The kids I’m working with right now are big fans of one that involves bouncing a ball off the wall. I think that would be right up your alley.” 

She grabbed a beach ball out of the mess on Dave’s desk. “My kids were doing it for math facts, but it will work for just about anything. It’s a speed thing—it makes the facts automatic in your brain.” She tossed the ball toward the wall a few feet away from her and shouted, “Seven times six!” When the ball headed back to her hands, she caught it and shouted, “Forty-two!” Jessica tried to spin the beach ball on her fingers, but she just dropped it. 

I picked it up. That sounded like a good idea, but I wasn’t sure I could use it for the current topic. It would probably work for my computer science vocabulary, though. I nodded seriously at her. “What other ideas do you have?” I asked her. 

“Oh, tons,” Jessica said airily. “But right now, I’ve got the best idea of all. Why don’t you come to the gym with me and Dave? We’re going to swim some laps, but maybe you could run the treadmill for a while or do whatever it is you jocks do.” 

Dave grabbed her about the waist from behind and squeezed her tight. “We’ll have you back here with plenty of time to keep obsessing over exams, but you’ll feel better while you’re doing it.” He picked Jessica off the ground and she squealed. 

If they’d asked me that the day before, I’d have turned them down flat. But other than being edgy and still wanting to flee the state, I was feeling a lot better. And after half hour on the treadmill and some time on the free weights, maybe even the jitters would go away. 

We spent a little more than an hour at the gym, and then Jessica brought the tape gun over. She and Dave went back to her place and left me alone to my work. I picked up the beach ball where I had left it on my chair and took its place. I spent five minutes or so bouncing the ball off the wall against the bathroom, not saying anything else. After I had a steady rhythm going, I undid my notecards. Not having enough hair to secure with the elastic, I instead wore it on my arm, glad no one was around to see it. 

I started with the cards. I read each vocabulary word and then tossed the ball. Sometimes, it took me five or six bounces before I remembered the definition, but it was working. By the third time I went through the deck, I was able to define all the terms before I caught the ball. 

I ate some lunch before I worried about my timeline again. I taped all the facts in place and hopped from event to event, calling the dates out loud the first time, then calling out the events the second time. I spent another hour playing with the timeline—sometimes just pointing at things with my Sharpie, sometimes reading them in my head, sometimes saying things out loud.

By three p.m., I was done for the day. I’d decided to take my own advice and take the evening off. Dave came home just as I finished playing a game of Call of Duty. “You look more relaxed,” he said. 

“Amazing what shooting some people does for excess aggression,” I suggested. 

Dave laughed. “Get any studying done?” 

“Get this,” I said. I jumped out of my seat and headed over to the timeline. I closed my eyes and hopped from card to card, reciting the date and fact on each one as I did so. “And that’s all thanks to your girlfriend.” 

“She helped,” Dave acknowledged, “but that’s all you. You’re the one who memorized all that.” He reached into his gym bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Jessica says that some of the smartest people out there aren’t really good at taking tests, but once they figure out how to study and make it stick, it’s not so hard.” 

He handed me the sheet and I squinted at it; it was titled ‘Study tips for kinesthetic and tactile learners.’ “I’m going to take another twenty minutes or so to over this again tonight, and again before the exams. But I need to let go of it for the rest of the time. Are you free to do something with me tonight?” 

Dave picked a DVD off the shelf with a sly grin. “Die Hard marathon?” he asked. 

“Do you even have to ask?” 

*** 

I’d gone over my timeline twice more that night before bed and had flipped through my notecards with the ball once. When I awoke in the morning, I did the same thing. I was surprised to realize that I could flip the card and know the definition without bouncing the ball; I’d suspected that the facts would go away once I stopped bouncing. Dave had already promised to go over my communications notes—all of them, not just the history of television—with me after my computer science final in the early afternoon. I’d gone to bed early with the intention of a solid night’s sleep, and for once, the fates had been on my side. Once I mastered that timeline, my gut came unclenched and I found it much easier to turn off my brain when the lights went out. 

I took another break while Dave was off taking his first final. I spent a little more time on Call of Duty and then checked my email. My exam was at one; I planned to eat in the cafeteria around noon and then review my diagram and notes once more. 

My email was a lot more interesting this morning than it had been the day before. I had a reply to my last message: “Fewer than 132 now. Good luck on your exams. I know you’ll do great. Big fat Q, Haley.” 

And then there was one from Mom. “Secret Santa update” she’d titled the email she’d sent to me and CCed Mallory. “Since Mal is not coming home for Christmas this year, she’s decided not to take part in Secret Santa. As such, I’m passing on her recipient to you. You’ll be buying a gift for Nick. His wish: “Something that’s mine that I never have to share with anyone else.” 

Well. When we were kids, we’d wished for impossible things all the time, but this was harder than I was used to. I started wracking my brain for something that Nick would never have to share with anyone, but I didn’t let it bother me too much. One thing at a time. 

It was nearly noon, and I needed to head out for lunch. I took my whole backpack despite the fact that I only needed my notecards and some writing utensils. I stopped by my mailbox on the way to the cafeteria and saw that there was a piece of paper in there—a package pick up slip. Dave’s mother is constantly sending him boxes, so I was surprised to see my name on the slip. No one had sent me anything all year, so what could it possibly be? 

I turned the slip in and the question of who the box was from was quickly answered: the box was labeled Kitchen  & Bath on every side. I put it in my backpack and took it to the cafeteria and then across campus. I had five minutes before my exam started; I had intended to use them to go over my notes one more time. Instead, I ripped the tape off my box and found a gift basket—sunflower seeds, nuts, M&Ms, a heating pack to go across the eyes (stress relief, it said) and a whole bunch of other items. I found the packing slip and discovered that it was called the exam survival box. I was already smiling when I spotted the note: 

Jordan, I wanted to put a box together on my own (and be creative about it) but I didn’t have the time. So I cheated. I hope this gets to you just when you need it most. All my love, Haley. 

I put everything back into my backpack and disposed of the box, putting the note in my pocket. Everyone was settling into their seats in the lecture hall for the computer science exam, and I joined them. My confidence had been at an all-time high prior to entering the room, but now my gut started twisting back up. This wasn’t the exam I had really feared, but I’d been nervous about it just the same. Here it was: all the information I’d spent so much time trying to memorize, and I just knew it was all going to fly back out of my head, just like it had every other time before. 

The TAs passed out the exams and when mine hit my desk, I felt the panic rise into my chest. I picked up a pencil, but then lowered it. Even the diagram on the front page, which I had aced the first time around, blurred into an image I couldn’t recognize. I took a deep breath and put my hand on my pocket—on the note from Haley. I remembered her words from earlier this year, when I had told her about one of my communications exams: “You’re obviously a good student when you put your mind to it.” I skipped the diagram for a moment and turned to the second page, where the definitions began. I looked at the first word and my mind went blank. Just like I had feared. 

I closed my eyes for a moment and pretended I was holding that beach ball again. I bounced it off an imaginary wall in front of me, and just like that, the definition of the term came back to me. I looked at the next word, and I knew that one, too. I started filling in definitions carefully but quickly. With a few simple tricks and some confidence, I’d conquered the test. I knew this one was definitely going to be an A.


	2. Ho Ho Humbug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally get home to find that one of my favorite people is either a Grinch or a Scrooge...and learn there actually is a difference.

To: ct_yankee_fan_00  
From: superjeff15  
Subject: help please  
hey Jordan i need ur help. im going to send u an envelope. inside are some instructions and another envelope. email me back if ur not going to be home for xmas so i can send it to someone else instead.  
Jeff

I flew by myself for the first time the Saturday after exams were over. I was feeling pretty confident about my final grades, but that wasn’t my main thought. My thoughts weren’t back in Gainesville; they were in a small town called Stoneybrook, Connecticut. 

I’d had to change planes in Atlanta, but despite the brief layover, I had a window seat for the whole trip. I watched the scenery change, and by the time I landed, everything was gray and white and completely miserable-looking. 

I loved it. I was home. 

Mom had sent a bunch of emails to Adam and me, organizing picking us up. She’d managed to find flights that arrived only twenty minutes apart, with the theory that I’d be able to get ahold of my luggage and then meet him at his luggage carousel, and it worked just the way she’d imagined. Only there were a few things I don’t think _I_ could have imagined: First was that Adam had grown a beard. Not a goatee, but a full-on beard. 

“Man, oh man,” I exclaimed as I spotted him. Adam looked up warily. He appeared to be as exhausted as I felt, but his face lit up when he saw me. I hauled my bags over to him and we hugged briefly. “It’s fur face.” 

“And baldy,” he said, rubbing my head. I shrugged. My friend Aaron owns a pair of shears and he does free hair trims, but he really only knows two styles: short and shorter. “Is it just the two of us?” Adam asked as I found his bag on the carousel. 

“You mean, just the two of us flying in today?” He nodded. “Yeah. Duke apparently has exams through Tuesday, and Byron’s coming in during the day Wednesday. Mom said that one of us is going to have to pick him up, as everyone else will be at work or at school.” 

“How about we drive out together?” he suggested. I’d been in more constant contact with Adam the second half of the semester than the first, and while he never seemed to have even a hint of homesickness, he obviously missed Byron and me quite a bit. We started to head toward the door to meet Dad at the drive up, but I suddenly realized that my Florida-approved clothing—a thin long sleeved t-shirt and jeans—weren’t going to cut it in the Arctic Connecticut winter. Adam smirked as I dug around and pulled out a winter coat which had been stored, unworn, in my suitcase all school year long. “What about Mal?” he asked when I was finally (almost) appropriately attired. “She taking the train in again this year?” 

“You didn’t hear?” I asked. I was usually the last one interested in family gossip, but that was usually because I didn’t have any good family gossip. “She’s not coming home.” 

“Really?” Adam quirked an eyebrow. “How’d she get lucky enough to get out of a Pike family nostalgia fest?” 

‘Lucky’ wasn’t the word I wanted to use. Ever since she’d been about sixteen or so, Mallory had tried to pretend she was too cool for us. She got invited to visit her friends at their summer houses or wherever while she was still in boarding school, but she never invited any of them to our house. I never quite understood whether it was because she was embarrassed by our family—the fact that there were so many of us and that we were so noisy—or if she was embarrassed by how…frugal…our family is. We’re not poor by any stretch of the imagination, but I can’t pretend it’s cheap to raise eight kids. In any case, Mal put a lot of effort in her late teens into avoiding spending time with us. It was a perspective I didn’t really understand, although obviously Adam did to some extent. 

I shrugged at Adam again as we headed outside. I didn’t have a hat or gloves, so I pulled up my hood and retracted the hand that didn’t hold my suitcase into my sleeve. “So what is with the beard?” I asked. “Is that what passes for fashionable in Ohio?” 

Adam rubbed his cheek, sort of self-consciously. “It was No-Shave November. You raise pledges to go the whole month without shaving. I didn’t get too many pledges because my friend Meiner said he didn’t think I could even grow a beard. And while it’s not quite as thick or wild as Meiner’s was before he shaved it off, it’s getting there.” I felt his pain a little. I’d never wanted to grow out my facial hair, but I remember being insanely jealous of some of my friends when they started shaving around the time we started high school. Adam and I didn’t have to pick up a razor until much later…like the summer before junior year. “So I’m taking pledges still. Well, bets is more like it. They’re doing a pool to see how long I wear the beard before I shave it off. Winner gets some of the money, but the rest all goes to charity.” 

I shook my head. “Only you could turn a charity fundraiser into a spectacle.” 

Adam puffed out his chest in mock-pride. “Hey. I can turn _anything_ into a spectacle.” 

“I bet you can,” I murmured under my breath. I’d caught sight of something familiar and all thoughts of Adam’s beard and fraternity life had flown out of my head. I tried to act casual, leaning forward to wave as Dad’s SUV pulled up to us, but my next move ruined it. I nearly jumped out in front of the car as it was still coming to a stop; had it been running any faster, I might have been hit. 

Dad was behind the wheel and I saw him shake his head at me. I could almost hear him saying, ‘Didn’t college knock any sense into you yet?’ But instead, he hopped out of the car. “How are you, son?” he asked. I didn’t answer, just gave him a giant bear hug. Dad hugged me back just as tight. 

“Could you be any more embarrassing, Jordan?” Adam asked from where he was leaned against a pillar a short distance away. “Cry a little. That’ll look really manly.” I flipped him the bird behind Dad’s back and he laughed. 

Dad let me go and took Adam in. “Still with the beard, I see,” he commented. “It doesn’t suit you.” I wondered briefly at the differences in the responses to me and Adam, until I remembered that he’d just seen Adam a couple weeks ago at Thanksgiving. “Wait until you’re a middle-aged middle manager to grow a grizzly bear beard.” He walked past Adam as he popped open the rear door, and I saw him squeeze Adam’s shoulder—or at least, his down coat. 

I didn’t get the second surprise until I got home. I expected everyone to be standing around, waiting for our arrival. It’s what we’d done the first time Mal had come home from boarding school. But I guess the novelty of far-flung siblings had worn off. Either that or Adam and I just weren’t as interesting as Mal was. In any case no one was home when we arrived. Vanessa and Nick were on dates (as hard as the latter was to believe) and Mom had taken Margo and Claire Christmas shopping. The house was completely empty. 

Adam didn’t seem to mind. He went up to our room, where the beds had been made in anticipation of our arrival, and went straight to sleep. I got the feeling that he’d spent the night before intoxicated. Dad looked at me. “Going to join your brother upstairs, or do you want to come Christmas shopping with me?” 

I shook my head. “Did Vanessa take the car, or is it free?” 

“She got picked up, so the car’s in the garage.” Dad was grinning. “That P’s a live wire. I met him for the first time this morning. He called me Papa Pike and bowed before me.” 

I smirked. Vanessa had sent me a long, rambling email one day a couple weeks ago. I suspect she was drunk when she sent it, as it was the night of Homecoming. It was all about how she really liked P, but sometimes he got nervous and acted like a damn fool. I was guessing this had been one of those times. I grabbed a set of car keys off the hook by the door and then went into what my mom likes to call the Winter Bin. I dug around for a few minutes before I emerged with a hat that fit my head and two gloves—not matching, but a left and a right. “Don’t expect me for dinner,” I told Dad, “but I’ll be home relatively early. Probably no later than ten.” 

“Ahh,” Dad said knowingly. He squeezed my shoulder like he’d done Adam’s. “Going to go find your own live wire, huh?” 

I smiled. “I know exactly where she is, too.” 

*** 

I’d never seen Kitchen  & Bath be so busy. Of course, I’d only been there twice before. But the parking lot was packed and when I got inside, all the registers were open and there was a line three-deep for the customer service counter. I’d thought Haley might be behind the counter—she calls herself “the K&B Counter Bitch”—but she was standing in the middle of the front aisle, directing traffic and answering questions. Customers were swarmed around her. She was smiling and joking with them, but if you knew her, you could tell that the smile was only on the surface. 

Before I could approach her, someone else caught my eye. The girl was walking down the aisle from the back of the store, and she stopped when she saw me, then squealed and came running my direction. I looked around me, wondering who exactly she was looking for. I didn’t recognize her at all, and I’m sure I would remember someone with such huge green eyes and a nose ring. Before I could respond to the squeal, the girl gave me a quick hug. “Byron!” she exclaimed. “You came to visit.” 

Oh, of course. I should have known. Kitchen & Bath is solid Byron territory, and we obviously look alike, especially while wearing winter clothes. “Um,” I said awkwardly, “I’m not Byron.” 

The girl gave me a sideways glance, but then a look of recognition came over her face. “Ohhhhhhhh,” she said, drawing it out. “You must be the guy Hay’s been talking about for the last four months straight.” 

I smiled, glad to hear that she thought about me as often as I thought about her. “Yeah, that would be me.” 

“So you’re Byron’s brother then. Tell him Morgan says hi, alright? He’ll remember me.” 

“I’m sure he will. I’ll pass that on.” 

The crowd finally cleared from around Haley and I got a good look at her from head to toe. I’d been picturing her as she’d been the last time I’d seen her (other than the day I’d left), her hair swinging in a pathetic August breeze, tucked back behind her ears with the aid of a headband, wearing a short sleeved t-shirt and short skirt. Today, she wore a pair of fleece-lined jeans, rolled up so the fleece was visible on top of her shoes, and a bulky blue sweater. Her hair was kept out of her face by two French braids. She was a little pale and looked exhausted. 

Haley bent over to straighten the bottom shelf of a display of wrapping paper and I took my chance. I walked up behind her and lowered my voice, doing a passable imitation of Dave. “Excuse me, miss, can you help me find something?” 

She didn’t look up from her work right away. “Of course, sir,” she said, her eyes still on a box full of bows, “What are you looking for?” 

I grinned; this was my big line. “My girlfriend,” I replied in my regular voice. 

Haley slowly raised her head, as if she didn’t believe her ears. When she saw me standing next to her, her eyes lit up and all the exhaustion went out of her face. “Jordan!” she exclaimed, enveloping me into an extremely tight hug. She buried her head in my neck and I kissed the part in her hair, afraid of that if I gave her a real kiss, I wouldn’t want to stop. 

I let her go; she was still on the clock for another fifteen minutes or so and I didn’t want to get her in trouble. She’d left a wet spot on my jacket where her face had been. “Are you crying?” I asked. 

“No,” Haley lied as she wiped a tear out of her eye. I grinned at her, knowing she’d never admit it even though anyone could see it. She squeezed both of her hands on my coat and let me go again. “When did you get in? You told me your flight was later tonight!” 

“Yeah, well, I lied. I wanted to see the surprise on your face.” 

She smiled. “Was it worth it?” 

I put one hand on the side of her head. “You’re always worth it.” She blushed, never breaking eye contact. “Your mom knows I’m here. She says to have fun, and curfew is midnight.” 

Haley raised her eyebrows. “You sneaky little devil.” She checked her watch and then stopped to answer a customer’s query. “I’m not off until five. What are you going to do until then?” I shrugged at her. “Are you just going to watch me work?” she asked. I didn’t answer, just turned toward some of the Christmas merchandise and pretended to inspect it. She giggled. “You’re goofy, you know that?” 

I walked past her and gave her another brief kiss on the head. “Ahh,” I said, “but who’s the one in love with goofy?” 

*** 

Our happy little reunion fell apart pretty quickly, though. After she’d clocked out from work and bundled up in even more layers than she was already wearing, Haley met me by the front door. “Mexican food?” she asked, taking my hand. She knows me just a little too well sometimes. 

We drove out to this new place that had opened earlier that year. When they seated us, Haley took off her coat, a hoodie and her sweater…and she was still wearing a button down shirt over another layer. “Get a little cold at work?” I asked her. 

“You have no idea,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “I used to wear gloves when they make me be floor supervisor, but they made me stop.” 

I eyed her outfit; everything was blue and white. I love her in blue, but it seemed like everyone else at the registers was wearing Christmas colors: green and red and gold and silver and the like. Her outfit seemed to be an anti-Christmas statement. “Are you dressed in blue and white for Hanukkah?” I teased. 

She grimaced. “Not on purpose. I just refuse to dress up for ‘the season.’” She said the last two words mockingly. “I wore all black last Saturday, and Lissa said I was horribly depressing. Coming from her, that’s a compliment.” 

I sensed that she was irritated with the topic, so I changed it. “When does school get out for break?” 

“Not for another week,” she said with a sigh. “I asked my mom if she could write a note saying that I have a horribly communicable disease and can’t go to school all next week, but she just laughed.” Haley attempted a smile for the first time since we’d sat down, but it was quite pathetic. “Honestly, Jordan, at this point, I’d like to go to sleep and wake up in January. If you weren’t here, I might go loony.” 

I took her hand. “Feeling overworked?” I asked. 

She squeezed my hand, but her expression didn’t change. “Yes, but that’s not it.” I watched her carefully, but she lowered her eyes. “I just hate this time of year.” 

I wasn’t following. “What do you mean?” 

Haley pulled her hands back and put them in her lap. “Christmas is for kids. It’s all about the lies and bullshit we sell them. I don’t see any point in celebrating.” 

I found that really surprising. I’d seen her be unhappy before, but this was something else. “You don’t like Christmas?” 

“Like I said, I just don’t see any point in celebrating. Santa, Frosty, Rudolph? That’s for kids. I may not be an adult, but I stopped being a kid when I was fourteen and some asshole held me down in the backseat of his car.” 

All of that was said in a low, frustrated voice. I looked at her face, but she’d put on a mask. “Okay,” I said slowly, not having the words to acknowledge the blatant rape reference. “So you don’t go for Santa. Well, what about the real reason for the holiday?” She finally looked up at me, questioningly. “Jesus’ birth?” 

Haley wrinkled her nose. “Oh, that.” 

“Oh, that?” I repeated. The waiter came by and took our order. “That’s kind of a big thing. You do believe in Jesus, don’t you?” I asked in an offhand way, almost rhetorically. 

The wrinkled nose turned into an entire wrinkled face and she looked up at the ceiling briefly. That’s when it hit me—I’d just asked the question of questions. Haley had told me her family didn’t “do” church, but it never occurred to me that she actually didn’t believe the way I did. I mean, she’d been so supportive when I’d told her about the Faith League and the pledge I’d made, I just figured she had to be on my side. 

I didn’t have anything to say about this little revelation that wouldn’t have been rude. I’ve learned to bite my tongue around Haley and wait until I’ve found a nicer way to say what I’m thinking, and that’s a skill that’s served me very well in other situations as well. I leaned across the table and brushed my hand against her cheek. “New topic?” I asked. 

She smiled at me—a real smile this time. “Name it.” 

*** 

I dropped her back at her car just before nine-thirty. We were both exhausted. I’d told her I wanted to get home and get a good night’s sleep, but that was only part of the reason for parting so early. I needed to get home and see the rest of my family…and I needed time to think about what I’d learned that night. 

The house wasn’t much livelier at nearly ten than it had been at four-something when I’d left. I’d followed Haley all the way home, watching her pull her Lexus into her driveway before easing onto Slate Street and pulling the Civic into the driveway. During the warmer months, we park it on the street, but you can’t do that during snowplow season. Dad’s SUV was out—he was probably still Christmas shopping—but the station wagon was there. I eased around to the back door and finally felt like I was home: I heard shouting. 

Margo and Claire were in the kitchen, arguing over who was going to have the last brownie. I closed the door quietly behind me and just stood there listening to them for a while. Margo was leaning over Claire—she’s a good five inches taller, only a few inches shorter than us triplets—and threatening to tell Mom about last Friday night. I rolled my eyes, wondering what exactly Claire could have gotten into; she’s still in middle school, for crying out loud. Claire returned the favor by threatening to tell Mom “about David Michael.” 

Clearly, this was not a conversation I wanted to overhear. I walked past them, neither one of them looking away from their debate, and grabbed the brownie and took a big bite. “I solved the argument,” I announced, causing both of them to jump. “ _I’m_ getting the last brownie.” 

I’d been hoping for a hug, or at least a ‘Hi Jordan, how are you?’ but instead all I got were scowls. “You pig,” Margo said, smacking me with a dish towel. 

“Pig?” I repeated. It wasn’t like I had eaten all the other brownies in the pan too. That was more of a Byron thing. 

“You’re male, aren’t you? All men are pigs.” With that, she flounced out of the room. 

Uh oh. What the hell was going on there? I crammed the rest of the brownie into my mouth. Claire was less irritated with me now that the brownie was gone; she was feeling more gossipy instead. “Don’t mind her,” she said, pointing towards the stairs where we could hear Margo stomping furiously up toward her bedroom. I waited for the door to slam, which it did a moment later. “Her boyfriend just dumped her for cheating on him with his friend, and she’s got awful cramps to boot,” she added, almost cheerfully. 

I shook my head at her. “You little shit,” I said affectionately. Claire beamed and began digging around in a cabinet for pre-packaged baked goods (now that the brownie was gone.) 

Mom walked into the kitchen at that time. “Language!” she exclaimed, giving me the evil eye. 

Claire emerged from the cabinet with a Twinkie. “Like I haven’t heard—or said—worse,” she said, heading down to the rec room with her treat. 

Mom shook her head. “Come here, you,” she called to me. I went over and gave her a bigger hug even than I’d given Dad. “Is it just me, or did you get taller?” she asked. 

I shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t think so.” I looked down at my wrists, which _were_ sticking out of the ends of my shirt. Maybe I had shot up a little; I wasn’t going to complain if I did. 

“When you triplets were about twelve or thirteen, if someone had told me that I’d miss you when you left, I’d have laughed,” Mom said seriously. “But it’s true. This house is just far too empty—and quiet—without you three.” 

I eased up onto the counter and watched Mom futz around in the cabinets, looking for something she wasn’t finding. “Did Adam ever get back out of bed?” I asked her. 

She snickered. “Nope. Either he’ll sleep through until the morning and be a,” she lowered her voice and looked around, making sure Claire wasn’t listening, “groggy little shit all day tomorrow, or he’ll be up about two. You should be prepared either way.” 

I laughed. “So it’s okay for you to call Adam that, but not for me to call Claire that?” 

“Hey. You pop out a kid or two, and you can call them whatever you want.” Mom had turned back to the drawers. “But not for at least another ten years. I’m not old enough to be a grandmother.” 

“I’m not the one you need to worry about for that.” 

“Oh?” Mom emerged from the drawer triumphantly, holding a small pair of pliers. The kitchen drawers in the Pike household are like a tool chest in most normal homes. “Who do I need to be worried about then?” 

I was saved at that moment by the front door slamming and a couple laughing voices. “Mom,” Vanessa called from the living room, shouting loud enough that I’m surprised Adam didn’t wake up, “Can I spend the night at Charlotte’s, with her and Becca?” 

Vanessa entered the room then, followed by Charlotte. Mom looked at the two of them. “Did Charlotte’s parents say it was okay?” she asked, as if Vanessa were six and these details need to be ironed out. 

Charlotte was still giggling over whatever joke Vanessa had told right before they had walked in the door. “I just got off the phone with my mother, Mrs. Pike,” she said. “Becca’s already over at my house, waiting for us.” She looked over at me and greeted me with a little wave, which was more than I could say for my sister. I returned it. “We called Haley, too, but I guess I understand why she turned us down.” 

She must have called Haley on her way home this evening. “She was pretty tired when I left her,” I commented. Not to mention crabby, I thought. 

“I’ll bet,” Vanessa quipped with a Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle. Charlotte rolled her eyes at her. 

“You have permission to spend the night at Charlotte’s. But I want you back here by noon,” Mom announced. She was still holding the pliers in one hand and it looked like she was itching to go use them. 

Charlotte and Vanessa left again a few minutes later in a flurry of giggles, Vanessa carrying a bag on her shoulder. The two of them took off in the Civic, leaving me and Mom alone. “It’s been a long day,” I told her. “I’m going to go take a shower, if Margo’s not hogging the bathroom.” 

Mom gave me another hug. “You’ve only been back for a couple of hours, and there’s already more life—and noise—in the house.” 

I grinned at her from the doorway. “And just wait until Wednesday, when we get Byron back here.” 

Mom smiled back. “You know Byron,” she joked. “Such a party animal. Never a dull moment when he’s around.” 

*** 

I spent the next few days doing the same couple things: Christmas shopping, trying to come up with an idea for Secret Santa, and missing Haley. That last part sounds stupid, right? She was right next door. But I heard from her less during Sunday, Monday and Tuesday than I would have when I was off at school. I’d expected our reunion to be full of moments of togetherness and closeness, but I’d barely gotten a kiss Saturday night. 

I wanted to fix whatever was bothering her. I wanted her to be smiling, giggling Haley, teasing and joking and telling me what a nutcase I am. I wanted to hold her close, but she seemed to be keeping a distance between us. 

On Wednesday, Adam and I drove back to the airport to pick up the last third of our trio. Adam was excited and chatty all the way there. Normally I’d have told him to shut the fuck up so that I could get a word in edgewise, but that day, I just let him babble. I learned all about his frat brothers and this girl named Annie who, I think, he’d slept with at one point or another. To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention. 

Unlike Dad, we parked the car in the cell phone lot and walked inside the terminal. Byron’s flight was supposed to be late, but that was alright—so were we. If I’d driven, we’d have been early, because I’ve never found a speed limit I didn’t like to break. 

We found the baggage carousel and started discussing Christmas presents. I’d picked up something for my parents back in Florida, but in the past Adam and I had always banded together to buy presents for the rest of our relatives. We decided, without discussion, to ask Byron to join us this year. Not only did we want to solidify the relationship we’d reformed with Byron over the last nine months (had it really only been that long?), but three people buying meant more funds and more creativity. 

Adam had a crazy idea about finding out how much a room dividing partition cost, because Margo and Claire had been arguing for the entire four days we’d been home. He figured if we could divide their bedroom in half, the two of them could avoid each other more, and they wouldn’t have to argue. “I dunno, Adam,” I said doubtfully. “They haven’t just been arguing in their bedroom; it’s been everywhere. The kitchen. The rec room. Even in the bathroom!” Adam and I were sitting on the edge of the carousel, but we both stood up when it started moving. “It’s getting to the point where I feel like I know more about the two of them than before we left.” 

“I know,” Adam said, shaking his head. “I’m almost starting to wonder what this thing with David Michael is!” 

We watched the carousel turn for a while, but no luggage came out. “Do you even know what Byron’s suitcase looks like?” I asked Adam as I stared at the place where the luggage would eventually appear. Every kid in the family has a suitcase, but our parents picked them up here and there when they spotted things on clearance, so it’s not like our luggage is coordinated. 

“It’s blue with a white stripe,” a voice called from behind Adam. We both turned around, and there he was. There was something different about Byron I couldn’t place at first, and it distracted me from greeting him properly. He seemed to be a bit less skinny and a bit more muscled, but that wasn’t it. 

Adam figured it out first and started laughing. “Dude, Jordan, dig the ponytail,” he said, doing a 360 to view Byron from all angles. 

I smiled indulgently at Adam as Byron ducked his head. He had indeed pulled his hair back into a ponytail. In all the years he’d worn it long—probably since we were about thirteen—I’d never seen him do anything more than dry it with a towel and run a comb through it. “I just didn’t want it to get all mussed up on the plane,” he said, embarrassed. 

He went to tug the hair band out, but I stopped him. “That’s pretty expertly done up,” I noted. “Not a hair loose, and none of those bumps.” 

This was not helping Byron’s blush at all. “Jossie did it for me, right before she dropped me off at the airport,” he said. “It would look like shit if I did it myself.” 

“Jossie?” Adam asked. “Which one is she, exactly?” He’d been asking me questions like that whenever I mentioned any of my school friends, too. Adam is good with remembering anecdotes but not necessarily with names. 

Byron smiled for the first time since he’d spoken to us. “She’s my fag hag,” he said lightly. 

Adam and I looked at each other and laughed. I gave Byron a hug like I’d given Adam when I first saw him. “Glad you’re back. It just wasn’t the same without you.” 

He looked surprised. “I missed you guys, too.” 

Adam pointed at a suitcase on the carousel. “This one?” Byron nodded. “Okay, let’s get out to the cell phone lot before they start charging us for parking.” 

The ride back from the airport was a lot like the one to the airport, except for one notable exception. I sat in the backseat of the Civic while Byron took the passenger’s seat, and he matched Adam story for story. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk so much at once. We were about three-fourths of the way home when Byron stopped talking in the middle of a story. “Jordan?” he asked. I leaned forward, meeting his gaze. “Are you feeling alright?” I nodded at him, bewildered. “I mean, you haven’t said a word since we got in the car. I’m not talking too much, am I?” 

I shook my head. “Actually, it’s good to hear you talk. You haven’t rambled on like this to the two of us since we were, like, fourteen.” He smiled a little sadly. “I guess I’m just off in my own little world.” 

Adam smirked slyly. “And I bet I know who’s there with you.” 

I closed my eyes and just bobbed my head around a little, not really nodding or shaking it. “I wish you were right,” I said, knowing that didn’t make any sense. 

I opened my eyes to find Byron watching me seriously. “Let me guess,” he said with a sigh. I raised one eyebrow querulously. “You went to go bring some Christmas cheer to your favorite neighbor, and she slammed the door in your face—metaphorically, of course.” My expression must have given him all the answer he needed. He shook his head sympathetically. “Has she given you her speech on the ‘crass consumerism of the holidays’ yet? That one’s my favorite.” 

I groaned. “You mean, she’s always like this at Christmas?” I asked him. I was hoping it was just working retail this year that was making her unhappy. 

“Yup. I spent a lot of time last year deciding if she was a Scrooge or a Grinch.” 

Adam snorted. “What’s the difference?” he demanded. 

Byron treated the question as if it were a serious academic puzzler. “A Scrooge refuses to participate or put any time or effort into celebrating. ‘Bah, humbug,’ right?” Adam and I both nodded, to let him know we were following him. “A Grinch ruins _your_ holiday, to the point of pushing your Christmas tree up the chimney.” 

Adam was trying really hard not to laugh, while I was more serious. I’d never realized there was actually a difference before. “What did you end up deciding about Haley?” 

“She’s a little bit of both,” he proclaimed. “Hay doesn’t want to have anything to do with the holidays, and so she’s mostly a Scrooge. But her constant harping can really put a damper on a guy’s Christmas spirit.” I felt my mood drop even lower. I’d found her the perfect Christmas present and I was worried that I wouldn’t get a chance to give it to her now. “Look, Jordan, Haley’s not made of glass, you know. If her attitude is harshing your mellow and ruining your Christmas, it’s okay to tell her that, as long as you do it nicely.” 

Adam finally did crack up laughing. “‘Harshing your mellow?’” he repeated. 

Byron looked sheepish. “I know. I’m sorry.” Adam continued to chortle a little bit, but he knocked his fist into Byron’s shoulder to let him know that it was nothing personal. A tiny smile crept across Byron’s face. “It’s an Alizah expression. I’ve discovered that I tend to pick up everyone else’s little verbal tics.” 

“Oh, really?” Adam said. “What have you picked up from me?” 

“Nothing,” Byron retorted. “The three of us are too similar, being raised in the same family, the same gender and the same age and all.” Adam made a face; he’d been hoping for a different answer. 

“Well,” I asked, “What about Jeff?” 

“Better to pick up some phrases from Jeff than something else,” Adam piped up, still stinging over Byron’s last comment, “like a disease.” 

Byron and I ignored him. “Has Jeff got you saying stuff like, ‘gnarly’ and ‘dude’?” 

Byron laughed. “He’s not a Ninja Turtle, Jordan,” he answered. “And anyway, I think your girlfriend says ‘dude’ way more often than my boyfriend does.” 

He was probably right about that. “When does Jeff’s flight come in?” Adam asked. “Are you picking him up?” 

Adam had his eyes on the road, so he didn’t catch the instantaneous change in Byron’s demeanor. The light went out of his eyes and he drooped in every meaning of the word. “Late May,” he said after a moment, “and we haven’t worked that out.” 

“May?” Adam repeated. “You mean, he’s not coming into town for Christmas?” Byron shook his head. Suddenly, Jeff’s email—and the envelope he’d mailed, which was sitting, unopened, on my desk—made a lot more sense. “That bites. I bought him a bottle of Scotch for Christmas.” 

“You didn’t,” Byron said, sounding aghast. Adam and I gave him a look. “He gave me a promise back in early October that he was, for lack of a better term, ‘going on the wagon.’ He hasn’t had a drink since.” 

“Wow,” Adam said. “Why the hell would he want to do that?” 

Byron smiled again. “You’ve seen Jeff when he drinks. When he starts, he has trouble stopping. He decided—with a little help—that it wasn’t worth it.” He put his hand to his forehead, as if he were going to run it through his hair, but he stopped when he remembered his hair was pulled back. “He said there were more important things out there than drinking, like getting his teaching degree.” 

I smiled on his behalf. “And you?” 

“And me,” he agreed, and the light was back. 

*** 

I thought about what Byron said about Haley being a Grinch and a Scrooge a lot over the next few days. She had turned down a request for a date on Wednesday night, saying there was just too much homework waiting for her, and then she’d worked again Thursday night. School was out for a couple weeks after Friday, and I knew she wasn’t scheduled to work. So I did something I’d done only once before: I camped out on her back doorstep, waiting for her to come home. 

She saw me and smiled, which hadn’t been the response last time I’d been sitting there. Her coat was buttoned all the way to the top, and she was loaded down with her school bag and a large cardboard box. “Hi,” she said quietly. She still looked as tired as she had on Saturday, but she seemed lighter and a little happier. 

I took the box from her and discovered it was open on the other side. “Is this your perfect world?” I asked her, remembering our conversation on how she’d needed to construct a visual version of a planet she’d written about. The box held a doll bed and had two doors cut into it. It looked like a little girl’s homemade Barbie house. 

“Yup,” she said as she unlocked the door. Matt’s bus wouldn’t be in for another half an hour, if he’d even come home on it, and her parents were still at work. “I got an A plus. Ms. Marquez really liked my commentary on the fact that there’s no such thing as perfect—that’s just something that children believe in.” 

We both took off our coats and over layers and she sat down on the living room couch and patted the seat next to her. “We don’t have much time before Matt comes home. This is the last weekend of his grounding.” 

I nodded. I’d heard all about Matt’s party and I could see the crack in the giant television the Braddocks kept in their living room. I scooted over into Haley’s personal space and wrapped my arms around her middle. She leaned into me. “I’m sorry if I was poking at you on Saturday,” I said. 

She shrugged and I felt it, rather than saw it. “You weren’t,” she said, looking unenthusiastic. “It’s just like I told you then. I don’t go for the celebrating bullshit. I’ll be a lot less unpleasant after the first of the year.” 

I sighed and she turned to me, her hair hanging loose over her shoulder. I ran my hands through it over and over again as she inspected my expression. “I have to go back to school right after the first of the year,” I finally said. 

“Why?” she asked, horrified. “You said classes didn’t start back up until the seventeenth!” 

I kept stroking her hair and she leaned back against me. “Yeah, but I have practice starting on the sixth.” I kissed the top of her head. 

Haley shook her head and I pulled my hand away from it. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m competing against a baseball for your affection,” she said quietly. Her voice had taken on a whiny quality. 

“For my time, yes,” I whispered to her ear, “but never for my affection.” She snuggled closer to my side. “We don’t have much time, so maybe we should make the most of it? I’m not asking you to be festive, just to make the time for me.” 

She pulled back a little bit and watched my expression closely. “I have more time now that school’s out. I’m sorry I haven’t been as…accessible…as you’d like me to be. When I get stressed out, I find it’s easiest just to retreat.” 

I wrapped an arm around her neck. “I understand stress, but if we’re going to work out, we need to pull together, not apart.” She let out a large breath and leaned back toward me. “I love you,” I reminded her. 

Haley closed her eyes. “What do you need from me?” she asked. 

I wondered what she meant by that. In the end, I decided to be literal. “I need you to lean on me when you’re not strong enough to stand on your own. If you’ll let me, I’ll be your rock.” 

Haley made a noise that sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “You sound like a bad soap opera character,” she said, her eyes still closed. I think she didn’t want to see my face. 

I smiled at her joke. Maybe I was getting through to her just a little. “I need a new scriptwriter, then,” I suggested. 

She opened her eyes and smiled at me, genuinely this time. “No. Don’t change anything.” 

“I need just one other thing from you.” She nodded seriously without replying. “Find whatever little bit of holiday spirit you may have deep down at the bottom of your heart.” 

Haley scowled. “I told you, I don’t have any holiday spirit. Have you seen how people behave at this time of year? You have no idea the kinds of behavior people will stoop to. Christmas is all about the…” 

“Crass consumerism of humanity?” I finished. She sagged, and I was suddenly glad I’d had that conversation with Byron. “That’s just one side of Christmas, Haley. So you don’t go for the child-like wonder, or the religious part of things. But there’s one part of the holiday season that everyone can get behind.” She turned her big brown eyes up at me. “Peace on earth? Goodwill toward men?” 

“Oh.” Haley pulled her knees up and curled up into a little ball. “I guess I can’t argue with that, can I?” I grinned at her. “What do I need my last tiny shred of positivity for?” I pulled her into my lap and gave her a kiss. “A little Christmas gift exchange with me? Just me, no one else, so you don’t have to pretend.” 

She kissed me back, wrapping her arms around my neck, and then leaned in so we were nose to nose. “I think I can handle that,” she whispered. And then she kissed me again. 

*** 

Those few stolen kisses were all we were able to share for the next few days. Since she was out of school, Kitchen  & Bath had scheduled Haley to work nearly forty hours over the week leading up to Christmas. Between that and the demands of Christmas shopping and Pike family festivities—tree trimming, baking and various other rituals that had been so important when I was a kid—there hadn’t been time for us to slip away by ourselves. As much as I loved my family, I was beginning to see Haley’s point a view just a bit: Christmas, at least the non-religious aspects of it, was really aimed at children. 

December 23rd rolled around and I’d finished almost all of my shopping. The baking was done and the tree was as trimmed as it was going to get. Mounds of presents sat underneath. I’d gone through and counted, and as far as I could see, there were only two things missing: my Secret Santa gift for Nick, and the manila envelope Jeff had sent, which I was assuming had to be a gift for Byron. I decided it was time to open it. 

There was a ragged piece of notebook paper wrapped around a smaller envelope with Byron’s name written on it. “Jordan,” the paper began. “I’ve been conspiring with Haley. Please give this to Byron sometime around Christmas. I don’t think he’ll want to open it with everyone else around. Thanks for your help and merry Christmas.” 

That seemed simple enough. I was hoping to corner Byron anyway, to thank him for the inadvertent advice he’d given me. This seemed like a good time to get both goals accomplished at the same time. We were the only two people home. 

I could hear quiet music playing from Byron and Nick’s room when I approached. I knocked and heard a cheerful, “Come in!” 

The music was a lot louder with the door open. Byron was on the floor in front of his bed, the laptop he’d bought himself just before he left for college on his lap. “Listening to piano ballads?” I asked him quizzically. 

“It’s Tom Lehrer,” Byron replied, as if that explained it all. “I’m recording it for Hay’s birthday present. You do know her birthday is coming up, right?” 

“January fourth,” I replied. He raised his eyebrow; clearly I’d surprised him. “So Haley’s into piano men, huh?” 

“Just you and Tom Lehrer,” he replied with a laugh. “And I think in _his_ case, it has more to do with the lyrics than the piano.” He flipped through the songs on the laptop until he found the one he was looking for. I listened for a moment and then laughed; it was a Christmas song that aptly summed up Haley’s life view right now. “So did you come in to listen to music with me, or can I help you with something?” 

I understood Byron’s comment right away. Generally, siblings knock on his door when they’re looking for advice or assistance. “No,” I answered. He looked up from his computer. “But there’s something maybe I can help _you_ with.” Without further buildup, I just handed him the envelope. 

“Oh,” he said quietly as he inspected it. I know he recognized the handwriting right away. 

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked. 

Byron shook his head. “Do you know what it is?” he asked. I shrugged and sat down on his bed, my knees near his head. He set the laptop, still recording the CD, aside and gently tore into the envelope. He lowered his head as he read the enclosed letter, hiding his face, but there was no mistaking the catch in his breath as he reached into the envelope a second time and pulled out two other pieces of paper. “Oh, Jeff,” he said quietly. 

“What is it?” 

Byron finally looked up. His voice was unsteady, but he was smiling. “He sent me tickets out to Los Angeles for the week I have spring break.” He wiped at his eyes, even though he wasn’t actually crying. “He said it’s his way of making up for Christmas.” He paused, and he was cheerful once again. “This really makes the shirts I sent him look like a shitty gift.” 

“You’ve given him a lot more than a shirt, though,” I pointed out. 

“Yeah, maybe,” he said thoughtfully. “But for everything I give him, I feel like he gives me twice as much.” 

“I betcha that if you asked Jeff, he’d say the same about you.” 

Byron squeezed my shoe. “Maybe that’s what love is all about—giving everything you have and feeling like you’re getting twice as much in return.” 

Maybe. But sometimes, love was when you gave and gave and felt like you were getting nothing in return—but you didn’t want to stop, despite that. “This is where Haley would tell us we sound like a soap opera,” I laughed. 

He grinned at me. “Coming from Hay, I think that’s actually supposed to be a compliment.” 

I stood up from the bed. “C’mon. I think we both need a distraction. I have one more gift to buy, and suddenly I know exactly what to get. Come with me?” 

Byron took a little more time getting to his feet. “Where are we going?” 

I thought about that for a minute. “Can we catch the bus out to Wal-Mart?” 

*** 

We always do our Secret Santa exchange early in the day on Christmas Eve. After Byron had helped me dig through the clearance Christmas crap at Wal-Mart the day before, Nick’s gift was successfully wrapped and under the tree with the others. I think my parents started the Secret Santa tradition because they were tired of all of us asking to open presents before Christmas day. That didn’t happen so much these days, although Claire did spend quite a while earlier in the week, shaking all the gifts labeled with her name and trying to figure out what they were. 

When we gathered in the living room for the exchange, there was a variety of emotions. Margo and Claire both had that excited, bouncy energy that I’d expected to be feeling. On the other side of the spectrum, Vanessa and Adam had that practiced bored expression that said that, once they had the opportunity, they would follow in Mal’s footsteps and flee far, far from the Pike home. Byron had been upbeat and smiling ever since he’d opened his airline tickets, but he was far more mellow and laid back than our youngest sisters. Nick, well, Nick just looked like he was still half-asleep. 

And me? I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as I’d expected to be, but I was nowhere near as pessimistic as Haley or as detached as Vanessa was playing. There were a couple of things bothering me. I had a few worries about Nick’s gift; even though I thought it was pretty good, maybe he wouldn’t appreciate my sense of humor. 

And then there was Haley. Her parents were spending the evening at a Christmas party, and my parents had—a little reluctantly—agreed to let me go spend an hour or two with her. In the past, they’d always made the argument that Christmas was for family only. But Mom had finally talked Dad into allowing it, saying, “He’s a grown man, John. He could have chosen not to come home at all.” 

Over the past few years, Secret Santa had worked like this: Dad would grab a gift from the pile and announce the recipient’s name. The wish would be announced, the gift would be opened, and the giver would explain how they had tried to fulfill the wish. Pretty simple. I watched Claire open a watercolor set from Adam—she’d sarcastically wished to ‘paint with all the colors of the wind’—and then I sorta zoned out. 

I was thinking about how my evening with Haley would go. 

In any case, I wasn’t paying attention too well. Everyone else had been laughing and cheering—even, after a spell, Vanessa and Adam—but I sat back and watched without really seeing, until someone plopped a black plastic trash bag in front of me. 

“Earth to Jordan,” Mom said, and I realized that everyone was looking at me. I shook myself and looked at the trash bag. It had a tag on it that said, ‘To Jordan, from Santa.’ It suddenly dawned on me that this was _my_ gift. I’d been so busy worrying about my purchase for Nick that I’d forgotten that I would be receiving a present as well. 

I blushed as everyone started laughing at me. “Um,” I started, “I asked for a way to keep Christmas spirit all year long.” I’d made that wish back just after Thanksgiving; I wasn’t sure I actually wanted Christmas year-round any more. Not if it would make Haley so unhappy. 

Gingerly I opened the ‘wrapping’ from my gift and pulled it out. It was the world’s most pathetic looking pine tree: a real, live baby tree, with maybe four branches on it. A smaller box was wrapped in wrapping paper within the bag. I opened that and goggled. My old security blanket from when I was maybe two was in there, as was a small, red tree ornament. I was still staring into the box when Margo spoke up. “It’s Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree,” she said, “complete with the ornament and Linus’ blanket. You can take it to school with you.” 

I jumped up and gave her a hug. I could hear Linus’ voice from the Christmas special playing in the back of my head. ‘That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.’ If anyone understood Linus at that particular moment, it was me. “Thanks, Margo,” I said, “I love it.” I headed back to my seat and wrapped my blanket around the small tub the tree lived in. 

Nick’s gift was second to last. By the time you get that far along in the exchange, everyone is usually guessing who each present is from. But there was no question this time; the only two people who hadn’t given a gift yet were me and Nick himself. Claire piped up. “What did you get him, Jordan?” 

I shrugged at her. “Let the man talk!” 

Nick didn’t mumble like he had the past couple years; he picked the small box up and held it up as he looked around and spoke clearly. “I asked for something that was mine and I never had to share.” He quickly began to tear into the wrapping paper. I glanced over nervously at Byron, who grinned at me. He’d never heard the reason I picked out what I did, but now that he had, he was trying not to laugh. 

Nick finally got the box open and pulled out a pair of boxers. They had a huge picture of Rudolph on the butt, and his nose lit up. “What the hell, Jordan?” he asked quizzically, but my sisters and Adam were all laughing hysterically. 

I didn’t give Mom a chance to chastise Nick for his language. “You wanted something that you didn’t have to share. Well, no one would want to share this pair of undies with you.” 

Nick looked at me and I smiled. He started to laugh as well, and that’s when Mom and Dad lost it. I watched my family all crack up for a while, and suddenly that spirit I’d been lacking for the past few days came back. 

*** 

After dinner, I bundled up to head next door. I gathered all the pieces of Haley’s gift, stuffing one in my pocket and arranging a way to carry all the rest. Everyone else was in the basement, watching a DVD of a yule log on the television. “Be back in time to get ready for church!” Dad called after me as I headed up the stairs. 

It was seven p.m.; we were leaving for church at eleven thirty. “No problem,” I called back. 

Nick was the only one who wasn’t in the rec room. He was helping himself to a plate of baked goods. “I never got a chance to thank you for those God-awful boxers,” he joked as I pulled on my hat. 

“You’re welcome. There’s actually more to the gift, anyway.” Nick looked up from the cookies, surprised. “Inside, pinned to the crotch, is a note. Read it later when you’re alone…or at least when it’s just you and Byron in your room.” He nodded, starting to look a bit concerned. “See you later.” 

Matt answered the door when I rang the doorbell and greeted me enthusiastically. He started signing much faster than I could follow; Haley had taught me a few signs, and I was better at reading them than remembering how to make them, but you still needed to sign slowly at me. One of the few I’d actually mastered was ‘slow down,’ which I used here. When I still didn’t catch what Matt was saying, I gave him an over-exaggerated shrug to explain I didn’t understand. 

“He wants you to go upstairs and meet his girlfriend,” Haley interpreted from the doorway to the kitchen. She lowered her voice, which I thought was a strange choice. “Matt and Lydia aren’t supposed to be in his bedroom alone, but as part of my present to him, I promised not to say anything as long as they don’t get, ahem, noisy.” 

I headed briefly up the stairs and said hello to Lydia, a pretty blonde with a cochlear implant who was a wicked-fast signer but could also speak and hear some. Haley stayed in the kitchen until I came back downstairs. “Basement?” I asked her. I figured she might want put the television on in the background, plus we would be farther away if Lydia and Matt did decide to be loud. 

Haley nodded. “I left your present down there anyway,” she said. “I actually decided to wrap my gifts this year, but instead of expensive, wasteful gift wrap, I recycled the Sunday comics.” 

The television wasn’t on, and Haley made no move to turn it on. She sat down on the couch and I sat beside her. “Do you want to open gifts right away, or…?” I let that fade out, giving her complete freedom of choice. 

She was wearing fewer layers today than she had been recently: a gold and green plaid shirt over a white long sleeved t-shirt, a pair of low rise jeans and slipper socks. She shifted so that her back was on the end of the couch and her slippers were pointed at me. “Tell me about your day,” she said. 

That surprised me. She knew I’d been spending the whole day celebrating. “You want me to tell you about my family’s Christmas plans?” I repeated. 

Haley shook her head. “I want to know about you. You seem so much more at peace today.” 

I took one of her feet and held it in my hands. “Well, I decided two things. One is that, no matter how much I love you, I can’t control how you feel. I can do things to try to make you happy, but ultimately, _you_ are responsible for your feelings. It’s not my job to ‘fix’ it if you don’t like Christmas.” I rubbed the ball of her foot and then put it back down. “Second, since I am in charge of how I feel, I can decide to have a good time, even if you’re miserable.” 

“And I am miserable,” Haley said. I put a hand on her face. “But I think I’ve got no one to blame but myself for that. I’ve thought a lot the past couple days about that. Last week, you said that I should remember that we need peace on earth and goodwill toward men.” She put her hand over mine. “Well, we need peace in the Braddock house. I think my mother will kill me if she hears one more negative word about Christmas, and Daddy called me a ‘spoiled brat’ last week when I told him I didn’t want to help him string outdoor lights.” 

I chuckled and started to respond, but she kept talking. “And goodwill toward man? I can think of a man that I should give more goodwill too. Someone who saw crazy, loudmouthed Haley and decided she was worth loving.” 

“Sounds like a pretty good guy,” I said with a twinkle in my eye. 

“He’s an amazing human being. And he only asked for one thing of me this past week, and I haven’t been able to give it to him.” 

“Actually,” I corrected, “It was two things. And from what I can see, you’re giving both of them to me right now.” 

She smiled and for the first time since I’d come home, I saw the Haley I loved. “Speaking of giving,” she said, and she jumped off the couch, returning promptly. “This is for you.” 

It was an envelope, and like Haley said, she’d wrapped it in comics. I almost laughed, because there, on the top of my gift, were Charlie Brown and Linus. I gently eased the paper off, careful not to tear it, and put the Peanuts strip inside my pocket. She looked at me questioningly. “I’ll explain later.” Haley nodded, secure in the knowledge that all would become clear in time. 

I knew what was in the envelope before I even opened it. I think Jeff expected that Haley would be too excited to actually wait until Christmas to give it to me. (Clearly, he underestimated her ability to keep a secret.) Sure enough, inside were two plane tickets. I inspected them closely. “These have your name on them,” I noted. 

“Yeah. If you’re willing to have me, I’m coming to visit you for spring break.” 

That was the perfect set of circumstances. If she’d tried to get me home for break, she would have been in school…and working…for my entire trip. Not to mention the fact that she’d have to be home by curfew every night. But if she came to Florida, we just had to work around my classes and games. She might even spend a few nights in my bed with me. “What did your parents say about this?” I asked. 

“Daddy said that I’ll be an adult by then, so if that’s how I _really_ want to spend my break that he guesses he can’t stop me.” Haley paused and then she smiled. “Mom, on the other hand, told me you’re only young once and to have fun.” She shook her head. “My mom’s getting so weird on me. This might sound stupid, but I think she’s kinda hoping I’ll have sex so I can tell her about it.” 

I laughed. “Yeah, that is kinda weird.” 

Haley had been perched on the arm of the couch during all this, but she climbed back down and squatted beside me on the couch. “Did I do good?” she asked. “Did you like my present?” 

“Yes and yes,” I said, leaning over to give her a kiss. She wasn’t expecting it, and she tipped over, landing on her back. I took advantage of her position, and her surprise, and climbed on top of her, drawing her into a deeper kiss. 

We’d been kissing for a few minutes when she pulled back. “I haven’t opened my gift yet,” she said, a little short of breath, “and my brother is right upstairs.” 

I didn’t let her go; instead I put my forehead to hers. “You’re the one who thinks they’re up there having sex,” I pointed out. 

Haley gave a half smile. “That’s true. We can come back to this in a minute…after I’ve opened my present.” 

I sat upright and held out my hand. She sat up with me. “And you said you didn’t have any Christmas spirit,” I teased. 

“I’m trying,” she said, and that was something I couldn’t deny. I went back up to the living room and brought all the pieces back. I set three things in front of her and she goggled. “Which one should I open first?” 

I tapped a largish, rectangular item. “This one.” 

Haley tore off the paper and held it up. It was a piece of artwork I’d seen while I was still in Florida and had barely managed to squeeze into my suitcase to bring back home. It was covered in inspirational sayings. One of Haley’s favorites, written prominently on the wall in her bedroom, featured right in the middle of it. “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” she said out loud, and then she turned to me. 

“You’ve got a couple more months of school,” I pointed out, “and then you’re leaving home. I know how much you love that scribble wall, but it will be hard to take it with you. I figured I’d give you a fresh start.” 

Haley eyed the second piece of her gift. “You mean…?” she asked, not finishing the question. She tugged the piece of silver ribbon that was holding the roll together and opened it up. It was a plain piece of dusty blue butcher paper, clean except for one thing I’d written in the corner in my navy Sharpie. ‘Tomorrow is a fresh sheet of paper with no marks on it yet.’ “For my dorm room,” she said, and I nodded. 

I held out the last, small package. “I think there’s only one thing wrong with your current wall,” I told her. “It’s all black and white.” Haley opened the gift and found a package of rainbow Sharpies. “You have to let the world see all your colors, like I do.” 

I waited to see what she thought about my gift. I’d hoped for a thank you or a kiss, but instead she burst into tears. I held her as she cried for a good solid minute. “What’s the matter?” I asked her. 

“You know that scene in The Grinch when the Grinch’s heart grows a couple of sizes?” she asked. “I think that might have just happened to me.” 

“Haley,” I said, trying to sound soothing, “Your heart’s always been plenty big enough.” And despite what Byron said, she wasn’t a Grinch, either. If anyone else was affected by her negativity, that was their choice. 

“Remember what you said the other day about letting you be the rock?” I nodded. “I have trouble with that. I’ve always been the strong one, taking up someone else’s battles. I’m not used to allowing someone else to do that for me.” 

I could see that. “We all have moments when we need someone else to guide us.” I thought about Dave and Jessica helping me solve my studying dilemma. 

We sat silently for a while. “Some Christmas celebration this is,” she said finally. 

I shrugged. “You didn’t want to celebrate anyway,” I pointed out. Haley smiled at me. “I have an idea. Let’s put our coats on and walk over to my house. They’re not doing anything Christmassy, really—just eating cookies and drinking eggnog. I’ll bring you back here before we leave for church.” 

“I can’t just leave Matt and Lydia here,” she pointed out. “My parents didn’t even want Lydia to come over. They only agreed because you and I would be here to chaperone.” 

“Invite them along.” 

Haley paused for a moment, thinking. At first I thought she was trying to figure out how to get out of coming with me, but when she spoke, I changed my mind. “Do me a favor: go ring the doorbell a bunch of times. Then I’ll go knock on the door to Matt’s room once they’re, uh, distracted.” 

I did as she asked and five minutes later (after a flurry of re-dressing that told us that Haley hadn’t been too far off base with Lydia and Matt), the four of us arrived at my house. I opened the front door and shouted “Merry Christmas!” Curious Pike family members appeared from every direction—apparently, the novelty of family togetherness had worn off in the time I’d been gone. 

The next few minutes were a flurry of chatter as Haley introduced Lydia to everyone. Finally, the noise level settled down and Mom invited us all into the kitchen, where she had a fresh batch of eggnog. Matt and Adam fell into a quick discussion about the Red Sox and the World Series, with Lydia translating, leaving me and Haley alone in the front hall. 

She grabbed my waist. “Hey, we’re alone without a chaperone,” I warned her. “Don’t go getting me in trouble.” 

“Mistletoe,” she said. I looked up over our heads to where nothing hung, and Haley actually giggled. “Made you look.” I kissed her anyway, because we’d never really needed mistletoe as an excuse. 

I was just holding her close in a hug when Nick appeared in the doorway. “Jordan?” he said. I looked over at him and loosened my grip on Haley. She turned so that we were both facing my brother. “I read the note. Thank you, seriously this time, not sarcastically.” He came in and, to my great surprise, gave me a hug. 

Apparently, it was to Haley’s great surprise too. “What in the name of Christmas was that all about?” she asked. 

I stifled a laugh at her use of the holiday as a curse. “I set him straight about something,” I told her as I thought about the note I had given him: 

Nick,  
You wanted something that you never had to share, so I tried to find something serious to fit that. But I couldn’t. Someday, you’re going to find someone so special that you’re going to want to share everything with them: your hopes, your dreams, your sorrows, your life and your bed. My hope for you is that you see them when they come along and you have the courage to do something about it.  
Merry Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to share a link to Tom Lehrer's "A Christmas Carol," the song that anyone who's ever worked retail at Christmas can relate to. I want to convert the whole world into Tom Lehrer fans if that's at all possible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZR3lJobjw


	3. The Best Excuse to Get Out of the House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who knew you could have so many deep conversations in one day? At least my evening was better....

It was December thirtieth, and I was up before dawn. That’s not really that impressive during the shortest days of the year, but I decided to take advantage of the peace and quiet.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that this was the Pike house. Even if you manage to find quiet, it never lasts long. 

That morning, the disruption arrived in the form of a normally quieter sister. Vanessa was still wearing the clothes she’d had on the day before when she joined me in the kitchen. I’d decided to make pancakes, so I’d whipped up a giant batch. Mom and Dad had both already left by the time I’d had the urge to start cooking, while everyone else was—I thought—still asleep. 

I sat down with a short stack and ignored her at first. Vanessa likes to be the one to start conversations when we actually talk, and she always does it abruptly—no small talk. “What do you think is going to happen at Haley’s party tomorrow night?” she asked as she poked at the pile of pancakes I’d left sitting next to the stove. 

“What do you mean?” I asked, not looking up from my breakfast. Haley was having a last-minute New Year’s party, and I guess her parents were so thrilled that she had enough friends to bother having a party that they’d even agreed to let everyone sleep over. I wasn’t sure who exactly Haley had invited, but I knew there were several Pikes on the list, including me, Byron and Vanessa. 

“How bad are her parents going to be?” Vanessa continued. She grabbed a couple pancakes and joined me at the table. “Will they be hanging out with us? I can almost picture her mom making us all sleep in a row with her in the middle—boys on one side, girls on the other.” 

I could see that as well. “The only thing I do know is that the girls will be sleeping on one level of the house and the boys on another.” Vanessa nodded, almost in grudging acceptance of that fact. “Why?” 

She shrugged. “P’s coming. I thought, maybe, if her parents were going to give us enough privacy, it might be the night.” 

Vanessa didn’t explain that any further, but then again, she didn’t need to. “No,” I said, a little more sharply than I meant to do. She looked up from her pancakes in surprise. “I’m not saying don’t go out and have sex with P. That’s your decision—yours and his.” Vanessa tilted her head to the side. “I’m just saying, please don’t do it at Haley’s. I don’t think she’d appreciate it.” I remembered the distress in Haley’s voice on the phone shortly after she found out that some of Matt’s friends had used her bed. 

Vanessa made a face. She had a run of maple syrup dripping down her chin. “Like you weren’t planning to do the same,” she said, sounding a little irritated. “You were complaining the other day that you and Haley never get any time alone together. Tomorrow could be your big chance.” I shook my head. Vanessa finally noticed the syrup on her face and wiped at it with a napkin. “Why haven’t you and Haley done it yet?” she asked, as if that were any of her business. 

I sighed. “Honestly.” 

“No, I really mean it,” Vanessa said. “Haley’s my friend, and you’re…probably…my favorite brother. You guys obviously care about each other if you’re managing to make a long-distance relationship work. I’d think you’d _want_ to make the most of what little time you have together before you’re split up again.” 

“I do…we do,” I told her seriously. “But it’s so much more complicated than that. We’re just not ready for that step yet.” 

“And why the hell not?” 

I really didn’t want to explain all of this to Vanessa. I stuffed the last bite of pancake in my mouth and chewed for a while, but I knew that wouldn’t distract her. “It’s just a really serious decision and something we can’t take back once we’ve made it. I want both of us to be completely sure before we go ahead.” 

Vanessa shook her head. “You sound like Byron,” she said. I quirked an eyebrow at her. “Think, think some more and then, before you make up your mind…just think it over a little bit.” 

I cracked a smile. “Well, it seems to work for him,” I commented. “He’s happier these days than I can ever remember him being before.” 

“Yeah, what’s with that?” Vanessa asked. 

“One word: Jeff.” 

“Of course.” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “That was a rhetorical question, dummy.” I shook my head at her and she grinned. “I’ll tell you something, Jordan. When you aren’t around, you’re all Haley talks about. Every third sentence is ‘Jordan this’ or ‘Jordan that.’” She looked around to make sure no one else was in hearing distance. “She loves you, you know. And I don’t want you doing anything to fuck that up.” 

“Precisely,” I replied. “That’s why we’re waiting.” Vanessa gave me one of those looks that she’s famous for: the kind that indicates that she thinks I’m from another planet. “I’m not going to push her. I want to be a safe place for her.” 

She sagged as the meaning of that hit her. “You’re talking about what happened to her back in the day,” she said quietly. 

She was right, but I was surprised Vanessa knew about it at all. “And how she’s responded to the world ever since. Look, Vanessa, I’m not saying we’re never going to do it. Just not yet. Just not now.” 

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” Vanessa said after a moment, in a tone of voice that indicated that she wished she _did_ have an argument. “That must be a first,” I commented as I gathered up my plate and rinsed it off. 

Vanessa looked around the table for something to throw at me, and, finding nothing, gave me a death glare. “I take back what I said about you being my favorite brother,” she growled. 

“Oh, whatever,” I replied as I placed my dishes in the dishwasher. I walked behind Vanessa and kissed the top of her head, just to annoy her further. “You can say whatever you want, but _I_ know the truth.” With that, I left the room. 

*** 

The pancakes were all eaten up in a snap that morning. I actually ended up going back and making a second batch, because Claire and Adam had finished off the first one, leaving one misshapen, pathetic flapjack on the plate. Margo came down while they were finishing up and made such a ruckus that I decided it was easier just to start cooking again. She was loud enough that she woke both Nick and Byron, so Byron ended up helping me by mixing up batter while I manned the griddle. 

Margo was in such a mood that she actually took her pancakes back up to her room and slammed the door behind her. We triplets had actually found a reasonably priced room divider that we’d presented to Margo and Claire for Christmas, and it had been erected almost immediately. Claire had been immensely grateful, but Margo’s mood hadn’t improved any. “What’s with her?” I asked. 

I’d been directing the question at Byron, who usually had a pretty good read on Margo, but Nick replied. “She got into a giant fight with Karen a couple weeks ago in the hallway at school. I didn’t hear everything, but I do know it had something to do with the guy she was dating at the time, Chris, and Karen’s stepbrother. You guys remember David Michael, right?” 

Oh, so this was the David Michael gossip! I made a mental note to pass it along to Adam, who’d made an escape up to our room (you could hear his heavy metal music playing from the kitchen) as soon as Margo started shouting. Byron nodded, less in answer to the question and more to let Nick know he already knew. “Karen apparently threw a party while her parents were out one night. There was a lot of liquor and apparently, some E.” He winced at the thought. “Margo ended up shit-faced and she made out with David Michael a little bit. I’m still hazy on who caught them, whether it was Chris or Karen, but Chris broke up with her and Karen isn’t speaking to her.” 

“That sucks,” I commented, and it did. I mean, Margo had made her own bed by drinking that much and letting it cloud her inhibitions, but who hadn’t made a horrible choice at one point or another? I counted myself lucky that I’d never been in a place like that. Margo and Karen had been best friends since they’d started high school together and you rarely saw one without the other. 

“Yeah. She’s really broken up about it,” Byron continued, “but I told her that she needs to keep the problems between her, Karen and whoever else and leave us the hell out of it. I pointed out that acting like a bitch to Claire, with whom she has to share a room, isn’t going to make things any better.” He sat down with his pancakes and Nick joined him. “She didn’t like that very much.” 

“I bet,” Nick replied. He was rubbing about a pound of butter on his pancakes. “She’s been really moody all year, even before this happened. You even suggest that she’s got an attitude problem and she rips you a new hole.” 

This was the most I’d heard Nick talk at once since we were young. I jumped up on the counter next to the still hot griddle, careful not to burn my butt. “So what’s with you, dude?” I asked him. Nick narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” I said, shifting a little further away from the griddle, “this whole new ‘you’ you have going. Dates every night. Girls constantly calling you. We’ve only been gone a few months and it’s like you’re a whole different person.” 

Nick shrugged, averting his gaze and focusing on his pancakes. “I guess I just figured out that girls weren’t from another planet,” he commented. 

“You might just want to be careful,” I warned him. He looked at me, stopping a mouthful of food on the way to his mouth. “You’re taking out a different girl every time I turn around. Girls get jealous really easily. You might have problems.” 

He waved that off. “I tell them straight out when they agree to a date that we’re not exclusive; we’re both free to date whoever we want. Most girls are really cool about that.” 

“What about the ones who aren’t?” Byron asked quietly. Both Nick and I turned to look at him, which was harder for me to do, since he had his back to me. “What do you do in that case?” 

“Hasn’t really come up yet,” Nick mumbled into his chest, sounding more like he had before we’d left for college. 

“And what if you find one girl you actually do want to keep seeing?” I asked. Nick hunched over his food. “We’re not trying to be mean, Nick. I just want to save you some of the heartache I’ve been through.” He looked back up. “Did I ever tell you about Lynn and Kelly?” He shook his head. “Well, that’s probably for a good reason. I dated both of them the summer before my junior year. I never made any promises to either of them, but then they both found out I was seeing the other one. It wasn’t pretty. They both stopped talking to me and each other because of it, and they’d been best friends since kindergarten. I don’t think they ever really got over it, either.” 

Nick nodded, and for a moment I thought he was taking what I was saying to heart. “What else were you doing with them?” he asked. 

“What?” 

He didn’t look up from his nearly empty plate as he continued the thought. “You weren’t just dating them, were you? You were going a little farther than that.” I’m pretty sure I blushed a little. Kelly and Lynn were numbers four and five of my seven. “I appreciate the concern, Jordan. I just don’t think it’s a problem.” He dumped his plate in the sink and left. 

I shook my head at his retreating form and gathered the mixing bowl and other tools and tossed them in the sink with Nick’s plate. I’d forgotten Byron was there until he spoke. “Someday,” he said as he brought his plate over and added it to the pile in the sink. “He’s going to wish he’d listened to you. But until then, I guess he’s going to make his own mistakes.” 

I smiled, faintly, at that comment. “Do you want to rinse or load?” I asked, referring to the dishwasher. 

“I’ll rinse.” He took my spot in front of the sink and rubbed sticky syrup off plates before handing them to me. We worked that way for a while without saying a word until the kitchen was clean. 

*** 

By the time Byron and I parted ways in the kitchen it was nearly noon. I wound up going upstairs and turning off the stereo in my bedroom. I expected Adam to protest, but he just looked up at me from the magazine he was reading. “Margo safely defused?” he asked. 

“Nope. But at least now I know what the problem is.” I repeated Byron’s story for Adam’s benefit. 

He shook his head. “Our baby sister,” he said in disgust, as if Margo had done something truly awful. 

“Adam, she’s not a baby. She’s a sophomore. Remember what we were like that year?” Adam and I had both been kind of wild, although Adam’s stories were mostly about petty vandalism and theft while mine were more about seeing how many girls I could kiss. 

Adam tossed his magazine aside. “When I hear stories about what our brothers and sisters are doing while we’re not here, I just want to shake them. But then you have to go and be all sensible and point out how we were at that age, and I realize I’d look like a total hypocrite if I said anything.” 

“Believe me, I know,” I said. “I just tried to give Nick girl advice. He basically turned around and said, ‘How many girls did you take out when you were my age?’ I guess it’s hard to use the wisdom of age on him when we’re only two years older.” 

Adam snorted. “You should point out that you’re still a virgin,” he said. “Maybe he’d listen to you better then.” 

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “Can you imagine if Mallory had tried to give us dating advice when we were sixteen? We would have laughed in her face.” 

“Absolutely,” he affirmed. “But you know what? Mal and I had a talk last summer, and I’m not so sure she was even a virgin when we were sixteen. I’m not sure she was a virgin when _she_ was sixteen.” 

“Wow,” I said. I thought that over for a moment, looking for a proper response. “I, uh…. No. Just wow.” 

“That’s about how I reacted,” he joked. “She’s actually slept with more guys than the three of us combined.” 

I nodded, knowing that ‘the three of us’ meant the triplets. “I hope so,” I said, hiding a grin. Adam looked at me questioningly. “You said ‘more guys.’ You and I are not in the habit of sleeping with guys, and Byron hasn’t gotten that far yet.” 

Adam shook his head. “You have the most warped sense of humor,” he said. 

*** 

Adam and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing video games, until he got a phone call and decided to take a shower. I waited until he was off the phone and then called Haley’s house. I was desperate to not get into any more deep conversations with my siblings and I figured the best way to do that was to leave the house altogether. Her dad answered the phone on the first ring. “Is Haley home?” I asked. 

“Is this Jordan?” Mr. Braddock replied. I responded in the positive. “Haley’s in, but she’s taking a nap.” 

“Oh,” I said. “Have her call me when she wakes up.” 

“I have a better idea,” her father countered. “Why don’t you just come on over? Mrs. Braddock and I are taking Matt and his girlfriend out on a double date, and I’d rather Haley didn’t just spend the entire afternoon and evening snoozing on the couch. If you came over, you could probably convince her to get up and do something.” 

I haven’t spent too much time with Haley’s parents, but I know adults well enough to know that he was concerned about Haley for some reason. I figured she was probably just relaxing on the couch because she’d spent the past couple of weeks working too hard and was exhausted. Her dad seemed to think it was symptomatic of something larger…and worse. “I can do that,” I replied, trying to sound casual. 

“Great! Stop by whenever you’re ready.” 

I was more than ready right at that moment, but I decided to take my time. I brushed my teeth and shaved. Byron caught me coming out of the bathroom. “Aftershave?” he asked, grinning. I looked away. “You must have a date tonight.” 

“Sorta,” I replied. Byron was watching me closely. “I’m going over to her house, and her parents will be out.” 

“Ahh,” he replied knowingly. I gave him a look. “If you get a chance, remind her about the pact she and I made. You won’t have to say any more; she’ll know what that means.” 

I shook my head at him, not sure I wanted to know what that meant. “Sure, whatever.” 

“And have fun tonight,” he added. 

“Right.” Byron was wearing his shoes, which was something he didn’t normally do unless he was going out. “And what about you? What are your plans for the night?” 

He made a face. “I let Adam talk me into going to some stupid horror movie with him and a couple guys. Either it’s going to be so cheesy that I’ll wind up laughing through the whole thing, or I’ll sit there with my eyes shut.” He leaned in a little closer. “Don’t tell anyone, but horror movies still give me nightmares.” 

I smiled. “Good to know that some things never change.” 

*** 

I arrived at Haley’s just as her parents—and Matt—were rushing around, getting ready to leave. “Jordan, good to see you,” her mom said as I came inside. I dropped my coat and wet shoes in the coat closet and followed her out of the vestibule. She sounded like she was giving me last minute sitting instructions; I kept waiting for her to tell me where the list of emergency numbers was. “Haley’s downstairs on the couch. If you could get her to agree to some activity that doesn’t involve sleeping, that would be great.” Mrs. Braddock wasn’t dressed up, but she was clearly trying to make sure she looked nice. She checked her makeup in the hallway mirror and straightened her jewelry. “We’ll be home by eleven tonight. We’ll be having dinner with Lydia and her parents and then we’re taking Matt and Lydia to the movies.” 

Ahh. Now, her behavior made sense. I wasn’t sure if the Braddocks had met Lydia’s family before, but I did know that there had been some tension there since Matt’s grounding. “I’ll just go downstairs and say hi to Haley,” I said, slipping away. Mrs. Braddock didn’t even reply. 

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I took in the room where Haley and I had sat, less than a week before, opening our gifts. Not much had changed. The stool that normally sat in the far corner of the room had been moved over next to the couch. And the couch itself was wrapped up in a lump of blanket. At the far end, barely visible, was a blonde ponytail, sticking out of the blanket. I quietly went over and kissed Haley’s head, startling her. She stiffened but quickly relaxed. “Jordan,” she said, rolling over so I could see her face. “What are you doing here?” 

I smiled at her. “Your dad asked me to come over and babysit for you while your parents are out.” 

She blinked drowsily. “Come lie on the couch with me,” she requested. 

I shook my head. “Your parents are still here,” I pointed out. “I’ll sit on the stool for a little while.” Haley rolled over to her original position, on her stomach with her face pointed toward the back of the couch. I plopped myself on the stool and watched the blanket rise and fall with her breath. She was still awake. “Do you always sleep on your stomach?” I asked curiously. 

She didn’t roll over. “Yeah, usually. Why?” 

“Just curious.” I’d actually been trying to figure out how the two of us could share my bed when she came to visit me at school. I usually slept on my side, and those mattresses are tiny. 

Mr. Braddock stood at the top of the stairs and called down to the two of us. “We’re leaving now,” he announced. “If you go out, send us a text, okay, Haley?” 

Haley yawned audibly, so I answered on her behalf. “No problem, Mr. Braddock. Have a good evening.” 

“You too. See you later.” 

I heard the door close behind Haley’s family and I turned back to look at her, burrowed in her little nest of a blanket. “Come here,” she requested. “I want you to wrap your arms around me and hold me close.” 

That was an order I wasn’t about to ignore. She sat up and I joined her, squished between her and the back of the couch. Haley lay on her side, her head on my chest. We stayed like that quietly for a while, her arms wrapped underneath me, one of my hands on the small of her back and the other on her head. As much as I enjoyed kissing her, this—being close to her, feeling like we were occupying the same space—was what I really missed when we were apart. 

After a few minutes, Haley scooted up toward me. “Kiss me,” she said, and I obliged. She wrapped her arms through my armpits up to my shoulders, and I tugged her even closer to me. She was wearing several layers again, including a fluffy pink sweater, and even with her pressed right up against me, I didn’t seem to be able to feel her through the clothes. I wanted to ask her to take off the sweater, but I didn’t think it was right to push her. Something about the way she was behaving told me that things were going to be different tonight than they had been before I’d gone away to school. She was more insistent about things; her kisses were desperate and she clung to me like she didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want to do anything to turn her back into the tentative creature she’d been before, afraid that I wouldn’t listen to her or follow simple requests. 

Because of that, I decided to follow her lead. She usually was the one to start the kisses anyway, since she didn’t much like surprises. But in the past, she’d let me direct traffic beyond that, so long as I didn’t push. I wanted everything to be her idea tonight, so that there were no pauses, no hesitation. 

We kept the status quo for a few more minutes before I started to feel flushed. “Aren’t you feeling a little warm?” I asked her. 

“Mmm,” she replied, her face up against my neck. “Want me to take off my sweater?” she asked, still muffled. Before I could reply, she pulled her arms free and lifted the fuzziness over her head. Beneath it she had a long sleeved white V-neck shirt, but she had an emerald green bra on underneath that I could see through her shirt. When I wrapped my arms back around her, I felt like I was actually touching her, not a lamb. 

We lay on our sides and I wrapped my arms at her hips, close to the top of her jeans. Haley drew one arm behind my neck to my other shoulder blade. I kissed down her neck to the part of her chest that was visible. She made a sharp noise, almost like she was in pain. I pulled back, alarmed, but she grabbed my arm. “No,” she said, “It’s okay. Don’t stop.” 

Haley’s breath was short and I continued to worry that she was on the verge of panic until she leaned in for another kiss. It took me a few more noises to realize that they weren’t pained sounds, but turned on. She was enjoying herself, possibly really enjoying herself for the first time while we were together like this. She’d never complained about our time alone, but she’d always held back, like she was afraid something would go wrong at any moment. This time was different. 

Her shirt came untucked in the back and I placed one hand directly on her skin, tracing her spine up and down with one finger. Haley sat up and looked at me. Her ponytail had come loose, and I reach over and tugged the tie from her hair, letting it float free. She smiled at me, but there was a slightly unsure quality to the expression. I put my hand on her face. “Is everything okay?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I’d gone too far, despite the fact that she’d never had a problem with me putting my hands inside her shirt before. 

She nodded. “I was going to take my shirt off,” she said, “but I changed my mind. I want you to take yours off instead.” 

I laughed, trying to hide the relief I was feeling. “Of course. Anything you say, ma’am.” I grabbed my rugby shirt by the hem and lifted it over my head. Haley’s seen me without my shirt before several times when we’ve been swimming, but never alone in private like this. I lay back down and grasped her hand. She pulled the blanket up over both of us, stopping just above my belly button. She drew one finger across my breastbone and down my chest to the navel, then, with a feather touch, circled one nipple. I drew in a breath in a gasp and she retracted her hand. “No,” I said, repeating her words from earlier, “Don’t stop.” I placed my hand over hers and put it back on the nipple. She grinned and I kissed her again. 

Haley’s touches were more hesitant, even though she seemed sure of her choices. It occurred to me suddenly that every move she was making now was a first for her. I’d been thinking of this evening as a first time for _us_ , but, although I had a lot of experience, the same was not true for her. She was working on guesswork and instinct, but she had amazing instincts. 

By now Haley’s shirt had come completely loose and her bare stomach touched against mine. I took the ends of the shirt and pushed it up higher, up under her bra. Normally by now I would have had her bra off of her for quite a while; one of the first things I liked to do was unhook it, a skill I had mastered when I was sixteen. But I’d been in no hurry for that today, because I knew the moment would come in its own time. I sat up and she watched me seriously as I kissed her stomach, hands planted firmly on her hips. After a moment she hiked up onto her elbows. 

I drew closer to her and she sat up all the way. I had a question on my lips, but one look into her eyes and I no longer needed to ask it. I carefully tugged her shirt off her body, as if I were unwrapping a most precious gift. For a moment afterward Haley turned shy, covering her body with her arms. I’d seen her wearing less clothing before, but I understood instantly how she was feeling. It was a feeling of being exposed and not having even the smallest layer of protection between you and what was going to happen next. I lay back down and pulled the blanket over me, opening my arms to her. She smiled, still cautious, and fell into my arms, snuggling up under the blanket. I kissed the top of her head and we were quiet and unmoving for a while before she spoke. “Jordan?” 

“Haley?” 

She paused. “Would it bother you if we stopped right here for tonight?” 

I held her closer. “No. Not if that’s what you want.” 

She wiggled free from my grip a little bit and dragged one hand free from under my arm. I thought she was going to sit up and put her shirt back on. But she surprised me, as she so often does. Instead, she unhooked her bra and smiled, secure in the fact that we could stop at any time with just a word from her. 

I kissed her shoulder and eased the strap down with one hand. She made her happy noise again as I eased a hand across her completely bare back. Haley lowered the other strap and I pulled the bra away from her body. 

Haley gazed at me as I looked her over and smiled. The shyness and self-consciousness that had plagued her earlier had disappeared and she smiled back. I reached carefully toward her, touching her as gently as she had touched me earlier. Haley shivered and goose bumps broke out all over her arms. “Cold?” 

“No,” she said in a low voice, almost a whisper, but I wasn’t so sure I believed her. I’d imagined this moment for a long time, but actually being here with her was so much better than I could have ever dreamed. It wasn’t just getting to see and touch her body, although that was something I’d hoped for for two years. It was the fact that she’d put enough trust in me to allow this moment to happen at all. “No, I’m not cold,” she repeated. “I just…” 

“Yes?” 

Haley shook her head; I think she didn’t have the words. “Thank you,” she said instead. 

“You’re always welcome.” I didn’t need to know what I was being thanked for. I leaned over and kissed her breastbone and drew my lips down lower. She tensed up and I stopped, looking at her. “You can tell me to stop at any time,” I reminded her. 

“I know,” she whispered, and since she didn’t say any more, I kept going. However, I waited for any other sign that she wasn’t happy. When I brought my lips to her nipple, she tensed up some more and I drew back away. “Please,” Haley said, still in a whisper. “Don’t stop.” 

“Are you sure?” I asked. “This can wait until another time.” 

She seemed to have found her words. “I know that this is going to feel good, because you wouldn’t do something that would hurt me.” I nodded. “My head knows that, and my heart knows it. But some of my other systems are having a hard time catching up.” I smiled at her and, although she had her fingers balled up and her breathing told me she was nervous, I moved toward her. 

And she was right; within a moment of my touching her again, she let out a deep breath and I felt the nerves all leave her body; she relaxed into me and closed her eyes, a small smile on her face. I made every move slowly, taking more time than I normally would have. With girls in the past, this was the opening act. Tonight, it was the whole show. 

*** 

I don’t even know how much time had passed when we finally got off the couch. Haley had put her clothes—even the pink sweater—back on, and I had returned my shirt to its usual position. She was folding up the blanket she’d used as a cover when my stomach grumbled. I hadn’t eaten anything since the pancakes I’d shared with Vanessa, and that was hours ago. “Hungry?” she asked. 

“Famished,” I replied. I grabbed the far end of the blanket, because Haley was still struggling, and helped her fold it. “Did you want to go out somewhere?” I asked her. “It’s not that late.” 

She shook her head. “No, let me cook you something,” she insisted. 

“You? Cook? Should I call the fire department and have them at the ready?” 

“Ha ha,” Haley said, smiling faintly at my terrible joke. “My mom’s been trying to teach me how to cook,” she added. 

“I know,” I told her, “for years now.” 

She passed me, the lump of blanket on one hip, and gave me a quick kiss. “She got serious about it this fall. We’ve found a couple ways of cooking that even I can’t fuck up.” I raised my eyebrows, questioning that statement. “Like putting things in the crockpot. I make a really mean seafood chowder.” 

I followed Haley up the stairs. “It’s a little late to put on a crockpot,” I observed. 

“That’s true,” she acknowledged. She ran up to her bedroom and returned without the blanket. “But I can make grilled cheese. Did I ever tell you how much I love grilled cheese?” 

“More than you love me?” 

She pretended to ponder that for a while, and I tackled her into a hug, smothering her in kisses. “Okay, okay! Uncle!” she shouted. I stopped kissing her but didn’t loosen my grip. Instead I picked her off the ground entirely and she squealed. “You win! I love you more than grilled cheese!” 

I let her go. “The small victories,” I said, and she laughed. I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she pulled out a ridiculous number of ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches. “Can I help?” 

She shook her head. “You’ve done so much for me tonight. Let me repay you in my own small way.” 

I didn’t look at it that way, but I didn’t argue with her. I thought she’d made a huge leap tonight, and it had been all her. I’d just been lucky enough to be the one going along for the ride. I watched Haley put together massively complicated sandwiches, with tomato slices and mayonnaise and multiple kinds of cheese. “Do you want bacon on yours?” she asked. “We have leftover bacon from breakfast.” 

I nodded; everything was always better with bacon. I came over and stood beside her when she put the sandwiches in the skillet, listening to them sizzle. I flashed back to earlier today when I’d stood in front of the griddle with Byron. “Oh, I just remembered,” I told her as she squished one sandwich down with her spatula. “Byron told me to remind you about the pact the two of you made.” 

Haley smiled and switched to the other sandwich. “Tell him,” she said, looking away from the stove for a second, “that it’s already been taken care of.” 

The sandwiches were the second best thing that happened to me that evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe I haven’t said this one yet, but thanks to Teah and Tessie, who got me reading the BSC in the first place. Thanks also to my nieces, Kakies and the Pepper, and my nephews Meester and O.K., whom we don’t get to meet for a few more weeks. I hope they all love reading as much as I do! Also, to Silas, whom we only got to know for a few short weeks, but who is waiting for us somewhere just beyond.
> 
> Coming up next in _A Year Apart_ : The new year is upon us, and someone’s just a little early.


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